Foundling: The First Book
by ebethman
Summary: Daniel meets a woman in a reacuring dream that may hold the answer to defeting the Ori. But it is not as straight forward as asking her how.
1. Dream

Daniel stepped through the event horizon. Nerves jolted momentarily as his bare feet touched the cold of the stone.

A slight breeze pulled gently on his sleeping pants and played across bare arms and chest. It wasn't destructive or disturbing, only making the leaves of the garden shuffle up against one another, making the whole place fell like it had a life of its own.

Something flickered at the corner of his vision. He turned to see what it was.

Nothing.

Just the trees and wall and garden.

It was a strange place. An overgrown, walled garden. Some of the stones in the walls were loosening and some had fallen and since been clamed by the dark weeds. The over hanging branches of trees blocked out any view of the sky, but it must have been night because no light was coming through and the only source of light was the event horizon of the Stargate.

Dark grass covered the ground and Daniel could feel his feet sinking into it as he stepped down from the steps of the Stargate. In the middle of the garden, where the DHD should have been was a circle of stones inlayed into the ground, about a meter and a half wide, seemed to take pride of place in the garden. In the middle of the circle was a pedestal encased with vines.

Daniel slowly moved towards the pedestal, more than a little concerned at the lake of DHD. It was a bit over a hand width wide and rose to just above his navel.

Brushing away some of the vines he inspected the top. It seemed unnaturally smooth, like flawless, polished marble but it was dull and grey like ordinary rock.

"Daniel" the word seemed to whip through the leaves on the wind, barely recognisable. Daniel's head snapped up. The trees were rustling but all else was quiet.

"Daniel" something moved at the corner of his vision. This time Daniel turned around, looking desperately around the garden for the source. He could hear the voice echoing inside his head. His chest was heaving, panicking. His hands were shacking, the back of his neck prickled and a bead of sweet rolled down his temples.

A slightly stronger breeze whipped through the garden. It was cold, Daniel shivered.

Suddenly, somehow, something seemed to force it's self into his vision. The pedestal. He couldn't take his eyes off it. It was as though it was resonating some sort of energy.

He moved slowly back towards it. His hand moved towards it and brushed away some of the vines. He crouched down to get a better look. There were symbols carved around the rim, six of them. It was a gate address, minus the point of origin.

Daniel traced them with his middle finger. Entranced by them.

All this time the Stargate had remained active, passively open and giving off its eyrie light. A figure stumbled backwards out of the gate, falling backwards onto the grass.

Daniel jumped up and took an alarmed step backwards, eyes wide with shock. It was a woman, clearly distressed, her breath came rapidly.

Daniel quickly glanced her over. He couldn't see her face as her back was to him but she had dark brown, almost black, hair the reached down to right between her shoulder blades. It was servery tousled, as though she had been running. She wore lose fitting, cotton like pants of an off white colour and a dark, sleeveless coat.

Daniel was startled like a rabbit in headlights. The woman scrambled backwards on all fours for a few meters, still fleeing what ever had scared her so much.

She unsteadily got to her feet.

Daniel finally managed to gather his senses together enough to say something.

"Who...?" his words stuck in his throat. Whoever it was, her head snapped up and she spun around.

The expression on her face shocked Daniel. It was torn with an inhuman fear and anguish. She let out a pitiful scream that tore through the air, crying out for help.

"DANIEL"


	2. Request

Daniel bolted upright, cold sweat dripping off of him.

Everything was blurred. He groped around until he found what he was looking for. As Daniel pulled his glasses onto his face everything came it to focus.

He was in his apartment; the soft glow of dawn was peeking through the window. As he regained his bearings his breathing slowed and he started to think strait.

Blinking his eyes against the throbbing pain in his head, he lifted a hand to cradle it. It was shaking so badly that he had to put it right back down. A feeling of utter helplessness swept over him, he could barely move for trembling. It was one of the most unsettling things that he had ever experienced, completely paralysed with shock, and that was really saying something.

Suddenly his brain gave a particularly painful throb and he doubled over in pain, pulling his arms up either side of his head. A pained grown escaped his lips. His mind was pushing something into his thoughts, relentlessly insistent on his attention. But the pain of it was unbearable.

And there it was, as clear as if it had always been there.

"Gate address." His voice a horse whisper, he could feel the six symbols pressing into his mind. Scrambling to his feet he started to look for a pen and paper.

*****

"Mitchell, wait up." Daniel called after the Colonel. He jogged down the concrete hall of the SGC to catch up with his friend.

"Jackson," half cried Mitchell, exasperated at Daniel's appearance there, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I work here." He replied, falling into step beside Cameron.

"Err, not at the moment ya not."

"Oh yes, the taking me off active duty thing." Said Daniel with an air of sarcastic calm, "was that really necessary by the way."

"Hey, you've had the same dream every other night for the last month. We cheeked you're house out and there was no one doing a bad Osiris impression so the Doc has put it down to stress. When you're stressed you stay at home, you eat junk food, play video games."

"I actually find it more stressful when I have to sit around at home with the Ori threat out there when I …"

Mitchell cut him off abruptly. "Jackson, we've been over this. Many times if I recall"

"Yes, yes we have, but I'm here about something different."

Daniel stoped walking and moved to side of the corridor to let others past. After riffling around in his pocket for a moment he extracted a scrap of note paper.

"It's a gate address. This is the first time it's come up. I saw it on the pedestal." He was breathless with excitement and was speaking faster by the minute.

"I am assuming that this is the pedestal in the alien, secret garden, thingy."

"Yes, yes."

"And now tell me, was this before or after the crazy screaming chick came through the Gate?" Daniel was growing ever exasperated with Mitchell's cynicism. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and cradled his pounding head.

"Hey, you okay there Jackson?"

"Yeah," he replied, his face breaking into a pained grimace. "I'm just tired." Before Mitchell could interrupt with any words of sympathy, or God forbid advice to go home, he carried on. "Look I think this could be something that I learnt when I was ascended."

"Then why would you be remembering it just now?" questioned Mitchell adamantly as tried to get a good look at Daniel's face behind his hands.

Daniel managed to regain his composure and he stared into Mitchell's eyes, trying desperately to let him know how strongly he felt about this, "Well we've all been going through a lot of trouble to find the Sangraal lately. Maybe my subconscious is throwing up the memory of the planet that it's on."

Mitchell couldn't help looking sceptical at this point. "What's a garden got to do with a little red stone?"

"Could be what the planet looks like."

"And "Crazy Screaming Chick"?"

To this Daniel could only reply dejectedly, "I don't know, I can't remember her from any where." Grimacing again he held up the scrap of note paper. "Just take a team and cheek it out, that's all I ask."

"Fine" snatching the scrap of paper out of Daniel's hand, he was staring him down and talking in burst of frustration, "Now you are going to go home and you are going to play PlayStation"

"I hate video games."

"You're a sick man, Jackson." And he went on his way, leaving Daniel to total boredom during the day and terror at night.


	3. Meeting

Mitchell thumbed aimlessly through the report in front of him. He never liked waiting in the briefing room; every second always seemed to pass unbearably slowly no matter what he tried to do to pass the time.

Vala had her boots up on the table and was deeply engrossed in a magazine when Carter came into the room.

"Hey Mitchell," She sat down in the large office chair next him. "How was he?" her voice and face easily showed her worry.

"What, Jackson? Well, good luck getting him to admit it but his head is getting worse."

"Well, I guess we can rule them out as being just dreams if the Gate address he gave made a connection." She said.

"I'm still gonna keep him away from here as long as possible." He turned to face Sam with an evident look of concern on his face, "You gotta admit dreams or not, he's been working himself into the ground lately."

"He's not the only one, I can't remember the last time I had a decent nights sleep. Is that the footage from the M.A.L.P.?" She indicated to the disc in front of Mitchell.

Mitchell picked up the disc and gave a wide smile, trying to lighten the melancholy mood, "Uh huh, and you will be treated to an exclusive viewing," his voice faltered slightly as he realised the flaw in his statement, "just as soon as Teal'c gets here."

Sam couldn't help but to smirk at Cameron's uncomfortable situation.

"I didn't know that the big guy was back yet." piped in Vala, finally bored with her magazine.

"Neither did I." said Carter.

Cameron attempted to clarify "Well, apparently the attempts to gain any order among the Jaffa after the Ori destroyed Dakara have been a bit of an up hill battle. Moment he heard we might have an address that could lead us to Merlin's weapon he jumped at the chance. He's just getting changed now."

Sam nodded in agreement, "Getting rid of the Ori would definitely help in reforming the Jaffa nation."

Vala gave Sam a rare serious look as she corrected her "Getting rid of the Ori would simply be good for the wellbeing of everyone in this galaxy."

"Too true." General Landry said in his tired voice. He had just walked up from the control room and was closely followed by a technician who silently took the disc from Colonel Mitchell and set it up on the screen.

Both Carter and Mitchell got up and saluted with twin greetings of "Sir."

"T," Mitchell called as he saw the large Jaffa walk through the door behind the General, "finally we can get started."

Teal'c gave a slight nod to the General as everyone sat down, "I apologise for my lateness."

"Not at all Teal'c, your people are in turmoil, I think I can forgive you for being a few minutes late to a meeting" at this statement everyone, save the General, noticed the look on Teal'c's face that clearly showed that he found this statement far from comforting.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road." Mitchell jumped up, breaking the uncomfortable silence. He dimmed the lights, lowered the screen, grabbed the remote to the DVD player and addressed the team gathered there. "As you all know. Jackson came in yesterday with an address that he thinks may lead to the Merlin's weapon. Of course we tried to make a connection and were surprised to see the intel was good."

After a few moments attempting to get the remote to work the screen filled with static. As the camera on the M.A.L.P. broke through the event horizon, they watched it reveal an alien landscape. It was different to many of the planets that they had been to before, the soil was very sandy and the plants that grew around the 'gate were greyish and spindly with sharp points on slender leaves. The few trees that could be seen had white, paper like bark and a smattering of small leaves.

"Well," said Carter, almost disappointed, "This doesn't look anything like the planet that Daniel described."

"Kinda reminds me of Australia." said Mitchell, tilting his head to one side.

Carter turned to him, looking perplexed, "What?"

"Oh," chimed in Vala, excited she could be of service "I believe it is a large mass of land in your planet's southern hemisphere that seems to be populated by many types of wild life, the most peculiar of which seems to be a creature that is able…"

Carter cut her off abruptly trying to make it as polite as possible, "I know what Australia is." thinking it was not enough she added, "I appreciate the thought though."

Vala gave a tiny pout. She had been quite sulky the last few weeks without her Daniel to torment.

"We seem to have strayed off topic." said Mitchell, a little louder than normal so as to get the two ladies attention, "and if you would watch, you would see that things are about to get interesting." The playback paned slowly to the left.

"What's that?" Carter lent forward in her seat as she watched the ancient remains of a wall came into view. As the camera continued to pan, more ruins came into view.

"It appears to be the remains of an extremely ancient village." Teal'c said. He wasn't wrong, it was a village, small houses of stone, that time had razed to the ground.

Grimacing slightly, Carter voiced what everyone was thinking. "We're going to have to get Daniel in aren't we?"

"I'm sure we will eventually." said Landry. "But I believe that SG-1 will be able to survive without him on a simple scouting mission of the planet." He gave a smile like a father would when talking about his children.

"Thank you, sir," said Mitchell. He had been worried about bringing Daniel in before he had to. The fact that these dreams meant something was more worrying than if they were just stress. When they needed Jackson, they needed him thinking straight and not falling asleep on his feet.

"SG-1, your mission to P23-723 is scheduled to depart in an hour, I suggest you get ready"


	4. Heat

NOTE: I've really been neglecting Foundling lately haven't I. Well I've been away but I've hand written a lot. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up by the end of the day. This is where things start to happen and I'm settling a bit more into the voices and how I'm comfortable writing. Oh, and don't worry, we get to meet the foundling soon enough.

I don't own Stargate or any of the characters I've written about…yet…

Mitchell, Carter, Teal'c and Vala walked down the steps of the Stargate on P23-723. They stopped in a line at the bottom of steps as the event horizon dissipated.

"Well," said Vala, fanning herself with her hand. "Does anyone else feel like they've just been hit in the face?"

"Yep." Said Mitchell as he pulls on a pair of sun glasses. "Definitely reminds me of Australia."

Teal'c crouched down and took up a handful of the fine brown dust. "This seems a most unlikely place for any people to settle and create a village."

Mitchell turned to look at him. "Now that you mention it, I doubt you could grow a weed in this heat let alone enough to feed a population."

"Well the climate may not have always been like this." pointed out Sam as she pulled out a devise from her vest pocket. "When the village was first built the climate could have been quite temperate." She activated the devise and cheeked the read out. "As for right now we've got a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius and a humidity reading of around 65%."

"Well regardless," said Vala as she flicked her hair over her shoulder, attempting to regain some composure in the stifling conditions. "it's hot and there's enough water in the air to quench the thirst of the galaxy." She walked off towards the remains of the village, oblivious to the looks she was getting from her team mates.

*****

"I never thought I'd actually say this but what I would give to get back to the SGC." Vala was sitting down on the ground with her back against the remains of an old wall. Fanning herself with her hand, she attempted to look as forlorn as possible.

"Suck it up Vala; we've been here twenty minutes." Cam was sick to death of Vala's moaning.

"I wouldn't be complaining if there was actually something interesting on this dust ball but all we've done since we've got here is walk around and wait for someone to jump out at us and say: Hey look at me," she put on a mock enthusiastic tone, "come with me and take you to the devise that is going to end all of your troubles."

"Carter," Cam whined, "please, please tell me that you're getting something, anything.

"Wait…" Sam was pouring intently over one of her devices. "There it is again…"

"Does that mean there _is_ something here?" Cam sounded hopeful and went behind her to look over her shoulder.

"Well, I guess so." Sam started to slowly turn on the spot as she looked and the palm size screen, "There's an intermittent energy ready, probably a bit of a way off, and it's coming from…" she came to a halt and pointed at a large bank of trees around two hundred metres away, "…that way."

Cam went over to Vala and roughly pulled her up. "Looks like Carter's just showed us the way. Teal'c, you found anything?"

Teal'c was sanding a bit of a distance away inspecting the remains of the village. "There are some tracks, however they are not recent and they all lead in the opposite direction. I also believe that they are not Jaffa, they may be villages from another planet foraging."

"That's good enough for me." said Cam, "Let's go."

*****

Behind the bank of trees stood the remains of a castle. It resembled many of the medieval castles over Britain; solid and hulking. There was a large keep surrounded by mismatched towers. It was both imposing and weighed heavily in its surroundings but at the same time, even though it had survived more intact than the rest of the village, was far from whole. What must have been the largest tower, making up nearly a third of the structure was nothing more than a pile of cracked stones and the rest wasn't in great shape either.

"Well," said Vala, halting her volley of complaints. "That is something."

"The readings coming from inside." Sam gave a small sigh, "We are defiantly have to bring Daniel back in."

"I don't know." Said Mitchell cheerfully, dropping his pack onto the ground, "we can always look inside for a bit before we go home and make _that_ call."

Vala barely stifled a laugh. "Are you kidding, it looks like it could fall down at any moment and I'd rather it not be on top of my head."

Turning towards Vala, Teal'c took up the role of reasoning with her. With Daniel out of the picture they had been taking turns. "From all appearances this structure has stood for hundreds of years. I believe that it is safe to safe to assume that it will survive one more day." As he turned away he showed a rare piece of humour by adding "and you."

After doing a double take Vala pouted and bouncing a fist off Teal'c's arm, earning herself a sore fist.

"Okay, let's get going." Said Mitchell, straightening up with a fist full of glow sticks.

The team set off. As they got closer they noticed that the castle backed onto a step cliff.

"It looks really out of place, doesn't it." Noted Sam. The others all nodded or made some sort of affirmative noise. She was right after all, the sight of a castle that would be right at home in the damp and cold of England or Scotland in the middle of this arid environment was a bit unsettling.

NOTE: Please review…you know…if you want to…


	5. Inside

NOTE: Well that was a quick turn around. I'm trying to keep the chapter lengths a bit short. What do you guys think of that? This chapter could have been combined with the next one.

I don't own Stargate…dam it…

**Chapter 5 - Inside**

The four of them went inside through the gaping hole that must have once been an impressive entrance way. The heavy wooden doors lay rotten and splintered across the thresh hold. As they climbed over the ruined doors the team noticed a distinct drop in the temperature.

"Okay everyone," said Mitchell "let's get this secure." He shone the torch mounted on his P-90 around the dark chamber. A few of the thick wooden beams from the ceiling had fallen and the floor was littered with rubble but he was satisfied that it was stable. "Ech, what a mess." He kicked a lump of rock that rolled pathetically onto its side. To his surprise the entire keep was just one giant room. It could have been some sort of throne room, even though no actual throne had survived. There was only a raised platform at the end of the room.

There were three doorways leading out of the main chamber. The one off to the left was blocked by rubble and presumably lead to the collapsed section of the structure. Through an identical doorway to the right a stair case could be glimpsed and Cam assumed that it lead up to the two smaller towers. The third door was a bit of a mystery. It was a dark hole tucked in behind the raised platform and from what the team had seen outside it lead right into the cliff face.

Cam sent Sam and Teal'c to explore the towers while he took Vala to look through the door at the back of the hall. He didn't think that he'd be able to stand her complaints if she had to climb up and down two sets of stairs in this heat. The lack of Daniel had seen her overall mood take a downturn. She was unhappy and Cam was torn between giving Jackson the rest he needed and cheering up Vala for the sake of all of their sanity. He didn't blame her for it though. She was living on a planet that was completely alien to her, her husband was part of a holy crusade to convert a galaxy and only a month ago she had been reunited with her fully grown daughter and was visible shaken by the encounter.

"Well let's see what we've got her." said Vala without much attempt at enthusiasm as she set off down the tunnel that the doorway opened onto. Cam groaned and set off after her.

Boring into the mountainside, the tunnel had raw cut walls and sloped downwards. Every couple of meters Cam cracked and dropped a glow stick to light their way back.

Suddenly, from above them, there cam a deep rumbling. As dust shook from crevices in the ceiling both Mitchell and Vala looked at each other for a moment and then they both bolted back up the tunnel.

"Oh," Cam pulled up abruptly as stones started to rain down at the mouth of the tunnel in the distance, "not that way." He grabbed the back of Vala's vest and yanked her in the other direction, back down the tunnel.

Suddenly they came to a solid wall. A dead end. Vala turned to Cam and yelled over the deafening noise, "What did I say before we came in here!?"

"Yeah, not such a good time for 'I told you so'."

Slowly the rumbling died away and Cam clicked his radio, "Sam, Teal'c, you two okay?"

"_Yeah, we're fine._" came Sam's reply, "_Sorry, that was us._"

"What happened?"

Teal'c's deep voice came through the tiny speaker, "_We were attempting to remove an item of interest from one of the towers when we discovered the structure to be unstable._"

"Where are you guys now?"

Carter again, "_We're in the main chamber. It seems to have held up._" Mitchell suddenly saw the gleam of her torch from up the tunnel, "_Some rocks have fallen in the entrance but you two'll be able to get out without any problem. We've got some stuff to show you._"

"Well there're some very interesting things down here as well." said Vala from a few paces away where she had wandered to.

"Now what are you talk…" Cam's voice faded from his throat as he suddenly took in where they were. They hadn't come to so much a dead end as the back wall of a room at the end of the tunnel.

Vala's gun mounted torch was now pointed at a large object in the middle of the room that – along with making Cam marvel at the fact they hadn't run straight into it – reminded him of pictures he had seen in mission reports. "That's a…"

"A goa'uld sarcophagus." said Vala smoothly as she leaned an elbow on the golden surface, propping her chin in her hand and smiled.

After pausing for a moment of thought Cam clicked his radio again. "Carter, how sure are you that this place is stable?"

"_As sure as I'll ever be. Why? What have you got down there?_"

"A Goa'uld crypt, sarcophagus and all."


	6. Knock Knock

NOTE: Again a really quick turn around. I typed up a lot of what I hand wrote last night though. Towards the end where all the action was really hard to write so I would appreciate reviews on it. This was fun though.

I don't own Stargate… Life's not fair I know…

**Chapter 6: Knock Knock**

A few minutes later, Sam and Teal'c had made their way down the tunnel and the team was standing apprehensively around the golden sarcophagus.

"What do you think?" Sam quietly asked Cam. She was nervous, everyone was. All P-90s in the room were pointed at the sarcophagus and were not moving any time soon.

"Well," said Cam slowly, "I'm thinkin' we should check to see if anybody's home."

Sam moved her head in not so much a nod as an indication of reluctant acceptance. "I'd rather take it back to the base but there's no way we'll be able to get it out now; there's too much rubble in the opening of the tunnel."

"Wouldn't it be better to wait until we can clear it?" asked Vala.

"Well I'd rather not have this thing lying about when it could open at any moment." said Cam. "What d'ya think T?"

Teal'c paused for a moment and then inclined his head slightly. "I believe we should open it."

Cam reaffirmed his grip on his gun, took a deep breath and muttered to himself, "Okay, here we go." Slowly and carefully he reached out his left hand, his right ready to squeeze the trigger, a placed it on what appeared to be the opening mechanism of the sarcophagus. Again taking a deep breath he looked around himself.

Four heavily armed people and a golden sarcophagus in a dingy, underground room. It couldn't have been more than seven feet high. With no other source of light the torches threw flickering shadows over the walls and people.

With on last breath Cam turned the mechanism and took a step back as it opened. As the two cover-stones slid aside a brilliant white light erupted from the gap between them, throwing even more shadows over the room and blinding the team.

"Arr!" Cam cried, throwing his free arm across his eyes. He could hear similar cries of pain from three other points in the room, though one of them was more a grunt than a cry. Cam pulled his P-90 tight against his shoulder as he blinked the spots out of his vision. All his other senses were in over load. His finger instinctively hovered over the trigger, ready to fire at anything that moved but he was terrified of hitting one of his team.

Slowly all of them regained their sight and saw that, apart from the open sarcophagus, the only thing in the room that had changed was that the four of them were now very jumpy looking.

"Everyone okay?" Cam asked slowly and carefully, not relaxing his grip.

"I think so."

"I'm good."

"I am fine."

All of the team replied in the same cautious tone, as if they didn't quite believe what the others were saying. Not one of them took their eyes off the golden tomb. All being too far away to see over the lip of the sarcophagus they edged closer.

There _was_ someone home.

There was a loud rattle as the team adjusted their weapons as one. There was a long pause.

Cam was getting fidgety so he spoke up, "Why isn't it getting up?"

Sam looked around nervously, "Should it be?"

Vala narrowed her eyes, "I think so." She edged a bit closer. The figure of a woman lay inside. "Not what I was expecting her to look like."

"No." Sam agreed, hanging onto the end of the word.

It was sprawled in the sarcophagus as if she was in the middle of a restless sleep. Her clothes were tousled, dirty and even ripped in places. One arm had fallen above her head and her hair – dark brown, almost black – had fallen over her face.

Vala tilted her head, "Is she even alive?"

"She _should_ be." Said Sam with a slight grimace.

"I'll see if I can find a pulse." She stepped up to right beside the sarcophagus and gingerly reached inside…

"WAIT!"

Sam practically jumped back to her original spot at the sound of Cam's voice. She'd wrenched her hand up to her chest as if it had been scolded.

"Sorry," said Cam with a sheepish grin, "I just reckon that Jackson'd kill me if I don't get a picture of her in her 'original condition'." As he grabbed the camera off Teal'c he caught Sam and Vala rolling their eyes. "Hey guy's, this is serious." He quickly snapped a few pictures and picked up his gun again. "We don't know who this goa'uld is and we might be collecting vital information.'

Sam looked at the woman and tilted her head, "It…she might not be a goa'uld."

Vala scoffed, "Don't you think the lovely shinny sarcophagus is a bit of a hint?"

"One may use a sarcophagus and not be a goa'uld." challenged Teal'c.

Vala arched up, not prepared to let go of her opinion without a fight. "Well what do you think the possibilities of a human or…whatever getting their hands on their very own sarcophagus are? Huh?"

"It's possible." Put in Sam.

"Even if they did, and I'm not saying that they could, we know that those things have a negative affect on _everyone_ and the thing in there could still be our enemy."

"People PLEASE!" Cam called over the raising voices. "We seem to have gotten a little off topic." Seeing that he had everyone's attention he lowered his voice to just above a whisper in a way that made all present hold their tongues and listen. "Now, our resident expert in this sort of thing isn't here. This means we have less intel than I would like. So, I suggest that we see if it," Vala gave a little proud smile, "is still alive so that we are not standing around here in the dark not knowing. Okay?"

Sam nodded as she looked around a bit sheepishly. She hadn't really done anything wrong but she shouldn't have encouraged Vala when she knew that she would bicker. Tentatively Sam reached down and brushed away the woman's hair. "I'll tell you what," she said quietly, "she looks sort of angry. More worried I guess."

Cam tapped his foot impatiently as he carefully aimed at the woman but away from Sam. "Carter…"

"I know." she said as she pressed her fingers against the woman's neck. "Well there's a pulse, it's slow though." Sam turned the woman's head from side to side. "I can't see any entry marks."

"That doesn't prove anything." Said Vala automatically.

"Vala…" said Cam warningly. "Carter, she's right."

Carter nodded again as she looked at the woman. Unfortunately she had taken her hand out of the sarcophagus. If she had still been feeling that pulse, she would have felt it steadily getting faster.

"Well," said Vala as she stepped up opposite Sam, "what do we do now?" Now that she knew defiantly the state of their discovery she was feeling a little more confident, even if it wasn't the desired outcome from her point of view. The same could be said for everyone else. Knuckles weren't quite as white against P-90s as they had been.

"I'll call for back up." said Cam, "See if we can't set up a more secure situation to take out guest back to base." As he said that he turned and started walking out to get to the gate.

"Are you sure that is wise?" asked Teal'c.

At that moment there was a crash and Cam had his gun up at the scene he'd spotted when he turned around to answer Teal'c.

Sam was crouched on the floor where she'd been extracting some lights but now had her gun up, desperately trying to get a clear shot. Her target was the preciously unconscious woman. The reason Cam, Sam nor Teal'c by this time couldn't immobilise her was because that crash had been Vala's weapon hitting the stone floor. The woman hand pulled her in front of her as a human shield. With on hand the woman had expertly yanked Vala's arms behind her back and had them well and truly immobilised, the other hand was clasped firmly around Vala's throat making her sputter and choke. The woman's thumb was firmly pressed against Vala's windpipe making the obvious statement of: "I can keep pressing and kill her."

"PUT HER DOWN!" yelled Cam.

Over Vala's shoulder he could see the woman's face. Her eyes were darting from one person to the other, trying to keep track of everyone in the room. In her face Cam could see the same expression that he'd seen in many a bad guy when they'd been backed into an inescapable corner: unbridled terror.

"Put her down," said Cam, trying to calm the very angry tone in his voice, "and maybe we don't shot you."

Light flared in the goa'uld's eyes and her distorted voice rand out as she covered up much of the fear with a booming command. "Who are you!?"

As soon as the last word escaped her lips a bolt of blue energy jumped from the zat in Teal'c's hand and hit Vala. The blue sparks travelled through her and into the woman in a flash. The two of them convulsed violently for a moment and then went limp,

Sam, being the closest, swooped in and caught Vala before she her head open and gently lowered her to the ground. In the same instant Cam went to the goa'uld, who had slumped over the side of the sarcophagus, and zip tied her hands securely behind her back. In the next few second he swiftly and expertly patted her down until he was 100% sure she didn't have any weapons.

"Teal'c, get it out of there."

The silent giant simply nodded and easily heaved her out and onto the floor where she fell like a sac of potatoes onto her side.

Cam then turned to Sam who was attending to Vala. "How is she?"

"Fine as any of us are after being hit by a zat." She took off her jacket and put it under Vala's head for a pillow. "Good thinking by the way, Teal'c."

Another nod.

"Arh, get those things away from me."

"Would you rather go back to being unconscious?" Sam put the smelling salts back in her pocket. "What now?"

"Now," said Cam, the anger rising in his voice again as he glared at the unconscious goa'uld lying at his feet, "now we get back to base and sort out this whole mess of a mission and we make sure that _this_," he gave her a rather unsympathetic kick, "is secure."

NOTE: Tee hee, Cam's really mad. Review pretty please.


	7. Call

NOTE: I like this bit. It's a little bit of an experiment of a way of writing so reviews will be very much appreciated. It's short but I think it's kinda cute.

I don't own Stargate…If I did…

**Chapter 7: Call**

"Hey Daniel, it's Sam."

"Oh hey Sam. So, to what pleasure do I owe for this phone call to a sick man? Hmm?"

"Don't be like that."

"Sorry. I didn't mean that."

"Well? How are things?"

"I'm bored out of my mind."

"You should try video games."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Like I said, what's up with the call? It's one in the morning."

"You're up."

"Point taken. Spill, what's the story?"

"You know that address that you gave us?"

"Yeah. Crazy garden with no DHD?"

"Actually no. The fact that the address actually works seems to prove that your dream is more that just a dream but we found something completely different to what you described."

"Really… Anything interesting?"

"You see, that's why I'm calling you. We found some, well I guess you could call them interesting, things that seem to be right up your alley."

"Really… Define 'interesting'."

"I thought you would be jumping at the chance to get back into the thick of it."

"Oh I am. I'm defiantly getting in the car the second I put the phone down. I just think it's a better idea to have some idea of what I'm getting into."

"We found some ruins on the planet, there was a castle."

"Since when did that warrant a phone call in the middle of the night?"

"Well… There was also a sarcophagus."

"A sarcophagus?!"

"Yep, fitted out with its own goa'uld who's now under restraints in an isolation room."

"What?... Really? Has he said anything yet?"

"Well _she_ is under sedation and has been unconscious for… four hours now. Teal'c had to zat her as well, she was making it a little… difficult to apprehend her."

"Difficult? Everyone's alright. Right?"

"Well… The snake did get a good hold on Vala's neck before we knocked it out. She took a bit of a shock from the zat. She's in the infirmary now. You there Daniel? Well…I guess…guess I'll see you when you get here."

NOTE: I do like those lovely reviews…


	8. Sleeping

_NOTE: Okay, there may have been just a little bit of squealing when I wrote this. What can I say, the first bit is just so darn cute and I've been waiting to write the second since I first came up with this story._

_I don't own Stargate…*sigh*_

**Chapter 8: Sleeping**

A hand clapped down on Daniel's shoulder. He looked around to see Cam was standing next to him with a comforting smile.

"Doc says she's going to be fine Jackson. Stop worrying."

Daniel turned back to the hospital bed where Vala was sleeping. "I know," he whispered, "I just haven't seen her in a while." A dark bruise had risen on the right hand side of her neck. Her arm was in a sling but he'd been told that it was only a slight pull and would be better in a day of so.

"Gawd Jackson, you look terrible. Have you slept at _all_ since you came in here last?"

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut. "Not much." He moved away from Vala's bed so as not to disturb her. "The dream's every night now."

"Well dream or not," Cam pointed at the empty bed next to Vala's, "you need rest."

Daniel clenched his jaw. Not really wanting to answer he looked away to Vala as she slept peacefully despite her weathered appearance. He thought about how nice it must be for her; not being afraid of her dreams.

"Jackson, so help me I will make It an order." Cam was a little feed up with his friend's stubbornness. "She's going to be here when you wake up. Lam says she's not going to discharge her until at least an hour when people are meant to be awake so I think you can manage a few hours of shut eye."

Daniel nodded defeated. "Guess your right." his voice grew more and more distant as he fell sideways onto the pillow. As frightened as he was of seeing that place and that woman again his eyes felt heavy and his mind was screaming at him to rest.

Cam could only hear mumbles from Daniel and the nothing at all. With a chuckle he walked out the door of the infirmary with a mumble of his own: "Night, night Jackson."

*****

Elsewhere in the base, as Daniel drifted off into silent sleep, someone else was waking up.

It all started with a pounding head. She quickly focused on the pain, feeling all the little pin pricks of light in that part of her body converge and heal the screaming neurons. She hated head aches, they were always fiddly but leaving them just to run their course was unbearably annoying. As the lights spread out once more they faded into dormancy, leaving perfect brain cell behind. She did the quick cheek of all the other systems that she'd gone through a thousand times before.

Nothing else terribly wrong with the brain, a few hormone imbalances that were a synch to fix. All the other organs seemed to be perfect. They shouldn't be _this_ perfect. Something was wrong. She'd been unconscious for who knows how long, there should be some deterioration.

Come to think of it, why had she been unconscious? Where had she been when she woke up? That was right; she was in the back chamber of the sanctuary at Aberon. What had she been doing there? She'd been in that blasted sarcophagus hadn't she. No wonder all of her was in such good condition. It had been healing her. That also explained the hormone imbalances. Oh, how she hated that thing. It also meant that there was no real way to tell how long she'd been out of things.

Now she'd remembered where she had been, time to focus on where she was.

She opened her eyes and then quickly closed them again, sending the lights in her to her eyes to mend the burning nerve ends. More slowly she opened her eyes again. Everything was grey at first, when she could see anything at all. A soft beeping that was perfectly timed to her heart beat was echoing in the room.

She tried to sit up but couldn't. Something was tight across her neck. She tried to pull it away but she couldn't move her arms. Things were tight around her wrists and her ankles too.

Well this couldn't be good.

Looking around some more she saw a large mirror in front and above her, tilted inwards so it gave her a full view of herself. She was laid out on a bed. Thick restraints held her legs, arms and neck in place. She wasn't wearing what she had at Aberon when the Jaffa had come for them. It was the most intact of the few things that she had, though that wasn't saying much.

What had happened there? All she could remember was running to the Stargate. What had happened then? How did she end up in the sanctuary?

"Well," she said quietly, her voice ringing true and pure in the silence, "this is new."

Behind the mirror her newly healed eyes could see the outline of a shape ad it moved.

_NOTE: Review…you know you want to._


	9. Interrogation

_NOTE: Is it possible to have too much fun writing a fic. I'm now on page 25 of 94 pages of hand written fic so hopefully the chapters will keep coming. Three Parts to this chapter. The title is for the last part._

_I don't own Stargate…If I did, let's just say I have plans…_

**Chapter 9: Interrogation**

"Wake up sleepy head." Vala threw her pillow with her good arm, hitting her mark on Daniel's head.

"Vala? You're awake?" Daniel picked up his glasses which had fallen onto the floor.

"That makes one of us. Good to see you. Things aren't half as fun here without you. Well, excluding current circumstances."

Daniel saw that the sling was gone now but she didn't seem to be moving her arm much. "How are you feeling?" He asked as he walked to her side and gave her pillow back to her.

"Oh, I'm fine. Ready to get out of this room though."

"How long have you been awake?"

"Oh," Vala shrugged, "twenty minutes. But listen, something's going on. Dr Lam isn't letting me out of here yet so I need you to go on a little reconnaissance mission for me."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Well it depends if you're up to putting up with me if you don't. Also I very much doubt if you could resist the temptation yourself."

Daniel sighed and rolled his eyes, however he was smiling at the same time. "Sure," he gently bumped his elbow against her good arm, "I guess I should go and see what's going on anyway." A line appeared between Daniel's eyebrows. He reached out and touched the purple bruise on her neck with the backs of his fingers. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes Daniel." She pushed his hand away, hating that _he_ was feeling sorry for _her_ at a time like this. "It looks worse that it is. What about you? Any more nightmares while you were snoozing there?"

"Actually no," Daniel rubbed the back of his neck, trying to work out some of the stiffness from his sleep. "Deepest, quietest sleep I've had in weeks."

"See," Vala gave Daniel a happy nudge, "even if you were ridiculously stubborn about it and are unnaturally attached to your job, all of the rest seems to have done you good."

"Yeah," said Daniel, not entirely convinced, "I guess it did. Well I'll get going now. You get well soon, okay."

*****

She'd finished going through her checklist. The sarcophagus had ensured that she hadn't lost any mussel tone. There _had_ been a tinny circular break in her skin right through to the vein that needed to be healed. She was also missing some blood that needed to be replaced. She couldn't understand how she could lose that amount od blood through a break in her skin that small.

Unfortunately there was one thing that she couldn't fix with the lights. The strap around her neck was digging her pendent into her neck and she couldn't exactly get it out. At the moment it was just annoying the hell out of her.

_"Oh, thank goodness you are alright." Jas'ak crushed his arms around her. "Have you seen anyone else?"_

_She shook her head, "Not since they started coming through the Chapa'ai. We were trying to escape through it when it activated. Most were mown down in moments."_

_Jas'ak grasped her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Is there anyway that you can get out of here? Anyway at all?"_

_She shook her head again. "That doesn't matter anymore." she pulled her pendent from underneath her cloths. "We have to stop them from getting anywhere near this."_

_Jas'ak looked around nervously, listening for any sign of Jaffa breaking through the fortifications of the sanctuary. "Do they even know about it?"_

_"Jas'ak, I can't take that risk. Even if there is just the smallest chance, I can't let them have this. What was that?!"_

The door of the isolation room slammed shut snapping her out of her thoughts. In came the man who had been yelling at her to put the woman down and his Jaffa commander.

"So," said Cam casually as he walked over to their captive who he was _now_ sure was secure, "we sure have some things to talk about don't we?"

As predictable as the tide the goa'uld's face stiffened and ordered in the distorted voice of its host: "Who is it you serve?"

"Now see," said Cam as he sat on a stool nest to her, not at all fazed by her attempt at intimidation, "When I said talk, I really intended for the questions to be coming from my side."

"Obviously it is not someone of great consequence," she sniggered, "if you are forced to use humans as interrogators." She looked to Teal'c. "Jaffa, you carry the mark of one I do not know. Who is it you serve?"

"_Perhaps_," Cam pulled her attention back to him, "I was not terribly clear." He stood and leaned over her immobilised form, his face livid. He really didn't like this snake. It had taken advantage of a moment when he had let his guard down and had managed to land Vala in the infirmary. "I will ask the questions and you will answer them all in as full a detail as possible or I will leave you alone with my good fried Teal'c over here and I can guarantee that you will spill your guts anyway." Seeing the smug smile creep onto one side of her face he lent in closer to her, his voice dangerously low. "And just to be perfectly clear, we don't _serve_," he said the word like it had a bad taste to it, "anyone."

Abruptly he stood up, taking his frustration out on a tray of medical instruments next to the bed which tipped onto the floor with a loud crash. Within two strides he was standing next to Teal'c with his arms folded, glaring back at her.

"What?" the look on her face told that this idea didn't make any sense to her. "But the goa'uld rule every planet in the sky." She still said the word 'goa'uld' with a sense of reverence.

"Hear me," said Teal'c, "The goa'uld are the scourge of this galaxy. These people are free and played a vital role in the dismantlement of the system lords. The Jaffa are free and we have a nation where we are our own masters. The goa'uld are on the run, in hiding, living off the scraps of worlds like vermin as they watch their empires crumble around them and are hunted to extinction. So you see, Goa'uld, your kind does _not_ rule every planet in the sky and we serve no false god."

Cam watched with satisfaction as the cracks crept across the surface of her smug façade. Her face was contorting as it tried to adjust to the new way of sitting. He couldn't help but make an obvious snigger at her discomfort. As more and more fragments of her persona fell away something strange happened. Cam had expected rage or terror or defeat. However, her face became open and her eyes shone bright with what could only be described as hope.

"What?" her voice just managed to crock out, free from any distortion. "The goa'uld, they're gone?" And then the most unexpected thing of all happened. She smiled the warm, open and true smile of someone who has seen the sun come out from behind the clouds.

_NOTE: Yep, that was fun. The Teal'c rant was particularly fun to write. Originally I meant for Sam to be the one that really didn't like her but the natural progression made it Cam. Also at first I wasn't very happy with the name Jas'ak but it's kind of grown on me. What do you think?_

_Please review_


	10. Her

_NOTE: This may be the last chapter for the day. Something that I really would appreciate reviews on the back and forth between the two scenes in this. I'm not sure if it is too confusing or not._

_I don't own Stargate…what a show it would be if I did._

**Chapter 10: Her**

"Dr Jackson!" called out General Landry cheerily as he potted Daniel walking down the hallway, "How are you?"

"Arh, good sir. Thank you." replied Daniel as he stepped up beside the general. "Actually sir, I was just going to talk to you. I don't really know what's going on at the moment and was hoping to return to work so that I can help out."

"Of course. Hey, walk with me." Landry set of down the hall and Daniel walked beside him. "SG-1 set off to the planet with the address that you supplied," no wasting time, "there they discovered the ruins of a village and a castle in an environment very different to the one you described."

Daniel nodded, easily following the general's straight forward way of speaking.

"They were exploring the castle when they discovered a chamber containing a goa'uld sarcophagus which they subsequently opened to discover one goa'uld in a female host. The goa'uld has now been brought here along with several artefacts."

"So where are we going now sir."

"To the observation room for isolation where the prisoner is being held. Teal'c and Colonel Mitchell have just begun the interrogation." Landry's eyes seemed to light up at the mention of that.

"I take it that she's regained consciousness then."

"Approximately four hours ago, we've been letting her stew for a bit before we start asking questions." Landry opened the door to the observation room and a voice could be heard coming out of the speaker next to the observation window.

_"What? The goa'uld, their gone?"_

"Wait a second…" Daniel breathed as he came into the room.

Cam stepped forward and righted an upturned tray next to the gurney where a woman was securely restrained. _"That's right. They're no longer much of a problem to us."_

Daniel was staring at the goa'uld. She had those unearthly, grey-green eyes that he could never forget. She had the dark brown, near black that – had she been sitting up – would have fallen down to right between her shoulder blades. She had that face that he had been haunted him and the voice that he had heard whispering his name a thousand times. "That's her."

*****

"Would you be able to remove these restraints?"

Cam was a bit taken aback by the genuine courtesy in her completely human voice. "Err, no. I think we'll be leaving those on for the moment."

"I assure you they are not necessary." she replied with a disturbing amount of sincerity.

"You injured one of our people." Teal'c's voice sounded the same as it ever did. "In our eyes they are entirely necessary."

"I am sorry about that." she truly did look like she meant it. Her attention seemed to wander then. She was looking to the one way mirror as if she was trying to focus on something. "I hope she's alright."

"She'll recover in a day or so. We're still not going to let you out." Cam folded his arms again.

*****

"Can she see us?" Daniel asked Landry.

"She shouldn't be able to." Landry sounded puzzled as he watched the events in the isolation room below. The light was low in the cramped room they were in, not nearly enough to be seen from the other side.

_"I hope she's alright."_

"Are you sure that's her Doctor Jackson?"

"Absolutely positive." Daniel replied.

_"She'll recover in a day or so. We're still not going to let you out."_

"It make's a bit of sense I guess." he added, "She sent me the address where she was trapped."

"A _goa'uld_?" Landry didn't sound convinced. "And how could she do that from inside a sarcophagus, or at all for that matter?"

_"I didn't mean to hurt anyone."_

"I don't know." Daniel shook his head and looked down at his feet, thinking.

_"Daniel, I didn't mean to hurt her."_ The woman was still looking through the window Daniel's head jerked up to meet her gaze perfectly. _"I'm not your enemy Daniel. You need to listen to me."_

*****

"Who're ya talking to?" Cam said, glancing towards the mirror.

The woman looked back to Cam. "I'm not your enemy. I don't mean harm to any of you or any of your people."

"Why should we trust a goa'uld?" Teal'c retorted.

She looked from one to the other, her eyes pleading for them to believe her. "I'm not a goa'uld. I'm a friend."

Cam threw his head back and laughed a mocking laugh. He casually strode over to the other side of the gurney and lounged against it. "Oh," he sighed and wiped a pretend tear of laughter out of his eye, "if that's not the worst lie I've ever heard. We saw your eyes, we sure as heck heard your voice. If you're not a goa'uld are you trying to get us to believe that you're a Tok'ra? We know they don't go anywhere near using a sarcophagus."

"I didn't choose to use that accursed thing!" she snapped back, a sudden amount of spite lacing her words.

"So you're claiming to be a Tok'ra?"

"No," she replied, taking a breath to calm herself, "I'm not. There's no symbiote in my neck."

"Well," Cam was confident in his position, "explain the voice and the eyes to me then."

The woman shifted – the restraints creaking – to look directly at Cam. "You learnt to whistle didn't you? You learnt to click your fingers. I learnt my own tricks to survive."

Cam stood up and moved to a different position around the gurney and a bit further away from the bed to force the woman to make a difficult shift to keep looking at him. "You're kidding right? That's not humanly possible."

Suddenly Cam was staring into the eyes of the woman, full of angry frustration. She was standing not an inch away from him as if she had always been there. "I never said that I was human."

_NOTE: So exciting. *eeeeeeck*. Please review._


	11. What!

_NOTE: It took a bit longer than expected to get this out but here it is._

**Chapter 11: What?!**

A zat blast sailed from Teal'c's hand, right through the woman's chest and into the wall on the other side of the room. Cam took a step backwards drawing his 9mm and pointing it towards the woman.

"Do you really think that's going to work?" she asked raising an eyebrow in almost a challenge but then she gave a small, tired sort of sigh.

Cam's eyes flicked around the room. "What about now?" he turned his gun to the gurney where the woman lay with her eyes closed as if she were sleeping, despite the fact that somehow she was also standing right next to the bed. There was two of her!

The one standing next to the bed bit gently down on her bottom lip. "It wouldn't kill me but I'd really rather you didn't."

The door of the room flew open and several heavily armed marines rushed in.

"Cover the one on the bed." Cam ordered and they surrounded the unconscious figure lying on the gurney, joined by Teal'c.

"Colonel Mitchell?" said General Landry as he walked in.

"Yes sir, forgive me if I don't salute." Cam didn't take his eyes off the woman standing.

"That's fine Mitchell," replied the General, "but I suggest that _you_," he looked to the woman, "start giving us answers or I _will_ order these men to open fire."

She looked at the general as he spoke but then she spotted who had walked in behind him. "Daniel?" she sighed in relief and took a step towards him only to be stopped at the sound of several weapons being cocked. She immediately raised her hands in a show of peace. "Daniel, tell them to put down the weapons. You know it will do no good." She said slowly.

Daniel's face was as cold as stone.

"Jackson, you know this…_thing_?!" Cam said catching a vicious glance from the woman.

Daniel didn't seem to hear Cam. "Who are you?" he said in a flat voice.

The woman's face fell. "I guess you don't remember. I should have known but I had hoped…"

"Who are you?" Daniel asked again. He had feared for this woman who had pleaded to him again and again every night. Now that he had seen that she had hurt his friend he couldn't help but notice every single threat that she posed to them.

"Daniel, you knew me once, I guess now you don't. I can see that I've got a lot of explaining to do." Her face looked strained and her voice was dejected and defeated.

"Okay," said Daniel, his face was still perfectly set and still in his cold expression, "what's your name?"

The woman fidgeted uncomfortably under his stare, "My name?" she shut her eyes and let out another tinny sigh. He didn't know her know her at all. How much had she managed to get through? "It's Giya."

Daniel frowned, puzzled, "Gaea?"

"It's Giya. I was named for Gaea."

"Okay." put in Cam, still very angry, "how about now you tell us why there are," he pointed rapidly from one Giya on the bed to the other one next to it, "two are you!"

Giya shifted uncomfortably again, taking a slight step backwards. This is probably the worst at this could have worked out. Oh well, bad first impressions weren't exactly new to her. "It's sort of a long story."

"Give us the short version." Said Cam curtly, "You're not in a position to be holding back on us."

"Okay." Giya said quickly as she glanced to all the guns pointed at her, the other her at least. "To put it way too simply I have two bodies and I transferred my consciousness between them. That body," she pointed to herself on the gurney, "is flesh and bone and blood. At the moment there is no person inside it, running automatically, staying alive until I return."

Giya didn't seem to notice that everyone in the room was looking more and more confused by the minute but she charged on through her explanation. All she wanted to do was get those guns away from her, she hated weapons, no mater how many times she had been forced to use them.

"This body is not like that one. It's not physical, it's," she indicated Daniel, "ascended."

The silence was roaring.

Cam was trying to sort all of this out in his head when he had perfect light bulb moment. "Ah ha ha," he took a step forward wagging his finger at Giya who took up a reflexive defensive stance. "You say that you're ascended. Ascended beings can't interfere with us mere mortals; we sure as heck know that. I'm pretty sure that this," he spread his arms and looked around the room, "counts as interfering."

Giya thought hard, "I have…" she fished for the best word to explain it "… an arrangement."

"An arrangement?" Cam said almost accusingly.

"People please," Landry half bellowed, "before we continue this continue this conversation I want to have this situation diffused into something with fewer weapons pointed at people." He turned to Giya and addressed her directly, "Return to you…solid body," he couldn't quite believe what he was saying, "and we will remove the weapons currently trained on you and place you under guard until we reach a decision as to what will be done with you."

"Okay…" she replied. She wasn't sure of herself at all, "but how do I know I'm not going to be shot the moment that I change. I don't know you so to me your word means nothing at the moment, mostly due to the fact that you don't trust me."

"We don't work that way." said Cam flatly.

Giya shrugged helplessly. "How can I know that for sure?"

It was then that she spotted Daniel staring at her dead pan like the rest of them. "But I do know Daniel. I know you're a good person. I know that I can trust you when you say something."

"Fine," he said quietly.

"Also," Giya didn't want to push her luck too far but she didn't have much to lose, she never did. "I wasn't the restraints taken away. I've told you that they're not necessary."

"Like you said," said Landry, his voice as strong and forceful as ever, "we don't know each other."

"Sir?" it was Daniel again. He turned around so that he was just talking to the general in his hushed voice. "If she's under guard…"

"Fine," Landry said to Giya as he stepped forward. "Now we have an agreement, would you be so kind as to honour your part."

Giya thought nervously, "The guns first."

"All right, you understand that you're our prisoner and if you try anything funny…" Cam was still beyond suspicious.

Giya nodded a bit dejectedly, "Of course."

"Of course." Landry repeated and then nodded at Cam, "Colonel, if you please."

Cam grinded his teeth for a moment before he spoke, "Airmen, dismissed." At this all of the guards lowered their weapons and filed out of the room with many odd looks to one another. This only left Landry, Cam, Teal'c, Daniel and her. If it wasn't for the fact that the body she currently inhabited didn't need to breath she would have let out a held breath.

"Now, Giya," Said Cam, weighing her name with spite, "your turn."

"Okay." She said nervously. She closed her eyes and she seemed to throb with a silent glow for an instant and then she faded into nothing.

"Where'd she go?" said Cam, tightening his grip on his 9mm.

"Don't worry," came a slightly horse voice from the gurney. "I'm haven't gone far. Can I get up now?"

Teal'c silently undid the straps holding her down. As soon as she could she discreetly tucked a pendent on a thin chain under her cloths as she rubbed where the bindings had cut in.

"Thankyou." She said quietly to Teal'c as the last strap around her leg came away.

Teal'c looked at her for a moment in shock and then nodded politely.

"SG-1," said Landry, "we need to talk. I want Vala and Colonel Carter in on this as well.

_NOTE: more coming soon. PLEASE, PLEASE review._


	12. Chest

_NOTE: A little bit of a change of course with this but I very much like this bit._

**Chapter 12 – Chest**

Cam knocked on the door of Daniel's Lab. "Can I come in?"

Sam and Daniel looked up from their work. "Sure." said Sam.

"Where have you been?" Cam asked Sam and Daniel returned to rooting through boxes, "You missed quite the interesting scene."

"I heard, Daniel just finished telling me."

Cam craned his neck to see Daniel, "What ya doing there Jackson?" he called.

"Looking for something!" came the frustrated and slightly muted reply.

"Like he never left." Cam muttered under his breath.

"What was that?" called a muffled Daniel.

"Nothing!" called back Cam and Sam together.

"So," Cam rubbed his hands together, "what's up?"

"Well, I've been going through this." She indicated a chest on the table in front of her. "It's what Teal'c and I found up in that tower."

"This is the thing that when you took it out the tunnel collapsed, sending Vala and me down that tunnel and getting us into this whole mess?"

"I wouldn't be so quick to call it a mess." said Carter challengingly.

"Why, what you got in there?" asked Cam as he leaned across to look at the contents that was spread over the work bench among many of Daniel's other artefacts.

"Most obviously there was this." Sam pointed to a goa'uld ribbon device. "It's basically the same construction that we've seen before. All the same components and principals of working with a few minor exceptions but the mettle used _is_ a bit different."

"Yeah I see." said Cam as he peered at it, not really wanting to touch it. "It's kind of ready. I thought it was rust for a second."

"I've sent a scraping of it to be analysed." Sam continued, "It could alter the way the device functions or it could just have been the fashion at the time."

"Goa'uld disco, I hear ya." Cam nodded, "What's next?"

"Well this is really Daniel's area but he was, and now is again, indisposed."

"There must be something."

"Well I'm having a lot of this carbon dated." Sam said looking over everything. "It just strikes me that this all seems not very goa'uld."

"How d'ya mean?" Cam asked.

"Well look here." She handed him a bracelet made out of different wooden beads. None of them seemed to match the others and the end was a massive knot that looked like it had tangled until it had stayed.

Cam looked at it closely. "It looks like it was made by a child…" he muttered.

"So does this." She showed his a small, flat, tablet of wood with just enough room on it for the single rune like symbol just visible on it. "I asked Daniel and he says that it was a good luck charm given by Jaffa to members of their family that are going off to battle."

"Okay…" sad Cam, thinking carefully through all of this, "What about all of these?" he motioned towards some bits of tattered parchment.

"Well, I com nowhere near being able to translate them." She pushed a few of them towards Cam. "But if you just look at them, what do you see?"

Cam leaned over them to look closer. "They look kind 'a like letters." He moved his finger from one to the next. His instincts from years in the field let his eyes quickly compare them. "There's always the same symbols at the end of each, same sender." he half murmured to himself.

"I asked Daniel to glance at them. There all from a Jaffa named Jas'ak." Cam worked his mouth silently around the name as Sam went on. "Some of its business, allocation of resources, planes for something, intelligence reports, but it's all just referred to. Mainly they're just letters between two friends, maybe more. Between this Jas'ak and Giya."

Cam thought for a moment, "Why would a snake keep all of this, the gifts from children, the personal letters, all locked up safe with a hand device?"

"That's it! I've got it!" Daniel practically jumped up holding a large piece of ornate parchment. "Could you make a space?"

Sam and Cam carefully shifted the contents of the chest and Daniel spread out the parchment on the bench, weighing down the corners with some books that were lying around.

"What's this?" Sam asked. This beautifully and intractably made parchment made the hand written letters look tatty and yellowed in comparison.

"_This_ is what I've been looking for since I left the isolation room. I know I recognised that name. I mean, the name Gaea is found all over the place, she was the Greek goddess of nature, Mother Earth if you will, but Giya is slight different. At first I thought it was just a variation but _now_ I'm not so sure." Daniel paused for a breath for a moment and then went on. "She said that she was named for Gaea, so Giya is a different person altogether. It's her."

"Wow there Jackson, slow up." Cam put a hand on Daniel's shoulder to stop him talking. "Now," he said slowly, "what is _this_?"

"Well," Daniel said, still brimming with excitement for what he had to tell, "this was found in one of Yu's more charming torture facilities from around the time that Anubis was murdered." He grimaced at the thought, "Most artefacts of this kind have now been handed over to the Jaffa nation. I've been hold onto this for a bit longer because some of it just doesn't make much sense. I suppose the Jaffa have bigger things to worry about now though."

"Jackson!" Cam interrupted again, "what…is…this?!"

"I'm getting there." said Daniel, a bit annoyed. "For some more high profile prisoners had their last thoughts recorded as a sort of evidence to their crimes. _This_ is the last thoughts of the Jaffa, Jas'ak."

_NOTE: Next bit coming soon. Pretty please review._


	13. Jas'ak

_NOTE: This bit's a little telling instead of showing but it's Jas'ak. I do like Jas'ak._

**Chapter 13 – Jas'ak**

"Jas'ak?" Sam said. "The same Jaffa that wrote the letters?"

"I think so." said Daniel. "He was taken prisoner and eventually killed – according to this – for his service to the goa'uld Giya who was killed in the storming of her base on a planet named Aberon."

"Well from what I've seen," said Cam, "she is very much alive."

"Yes, that's just one of the things about this that doesn't make sense." Daniel wasn't anywhere near done yet. "This is a great source of information because it's a list of crimes and sort of a life story of Jas'ak according to Yu – don't even think it – as well as his final testament.

"Jas'ak was originally a Jaffa high up in the ranks of another goa'uld by the name of Mordel who wound like he was a very minor playing in everything. For some reason Jas'ak left his home, his wife and daughter, in the middle of the night for what seems like no reason whatsoever.

"At that point he was sentenced to death in his absence. Al goa'uld would have been more than willing to kill him. They didn't want their own armies to get any ideas of desertion."

"So he was sort of like the original Teal'c." said Cam.

"Sort of," replied Daniel, "there were no ideas of Jaffa freedom attached to his name, he was just said to be a coward.

"However, about a year later he resurfaced along with a new face in all of this. He had become the first prime of a particularly power hungry goa'uld named Giya. Giya quickly associated herself with Anubis, becoming one of his most trusted lieutenants. Naturally Giya seems to not have been particularly liked among goa'uld."

"Well good for her." put in Cam sarcastically.

"The testament says she had 'a handful of Jaffa, all stolen by her from many others, but the majority of her armies were human.'. Jaffa are a bit of a status symbol among minor goa'uld."

"So," said Sam, "they didn't like one of the commoners rising up to such a high position." She watched Daniel nod. "And I guess that a lot of the lower goa'uld weren't happy that she was stealing their Jaffa armies."

"That's right." said Daniel. "Now, to the System Lords and their associates the amount that she had wouldn't have mattered much but to others every single one counts. Giya would have had around a battalion of fifty."

"That doesn't sound like many." Cam said frowning. "I can't believe I'm discussing this but how would she get to be a System Lord's lieutenant with only fifty Jaffa?"

"Well it says here that her armies were supplemented by humans, which seems to have happened a lot among minor goa'uld with few Jaffa. It would mean that her army wasn't particularly powerful. Anubis would have probably supplied her with some of his Jaffa if she needed them for missions but that's just the thing. It's another thing that doesn't make sense. What use would Anubis have with her when his own Jaffa would be doing a lot of the work?

"All indications show that her territory never extended beyond a single system with only on inhabitable planet, the one that you visited, Aberon. What did she have that Anubis needed?"

Sam shrugged, "Maybe she had some sort of knowledge that interested him. The display that we saw down in the isolation room could have been enough for him to want to keep an eye on her."

Daniel screwed up his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I hadn't thought of that one."

Sam made a slight movement in Daniel's direction. "Are you okay Daniel?"

"No, I'm fine." said Daniel very unconvincingly.

"Level with me here Jackson." said Cam seriously. "You still got those headaches?"

"No," Daniel shook his head and stood upright. "I'm just really exhausted."

Cam nodded once. "I tell ya this: Giya has a lot of questions to answer."

"I could have told you that." said Daniel.

There was a tense silence before Sam had the sense to say something. "So, do you know what happened to her next?"

"Well we know that the System Lords kicked Anubis out for 'unspeakable crimes'." said Daniel with air quotes and all. "It seems that Giya stuck with him up until the point he was thought to have been killed but of course…"

Sam nodded, "He ascended…"

"…and started off all _that_ mess." Daniel finished. "Well, for what we're dealing with _now_ he was dead, gone. There was a massive power vacuum, everything that Anubis had was up for the taking."

"Let me guess," said Cam, "all those nasty goa'ulds that didn't like Giya saw this as a great opportunity to nock her off now that she wasn't being protected by Anubis."

"Bingo." Daniel pointed at Cam. "Though a technicality she was eligible to take Anubis' place as a System Lord. Lord Yu wasn't very happy about that. Being an avid opponent of Anubis he saw this as the perfect time to take her out of the picture. Her army was diminished from fending off all of those snapping at her heals so Lord Yu simply sent his Jaffa through to Aberon. According to this everyone there was massacred, Giya was killed and Jas'ak was taken as a prize to be tortured and killed."

Sam grimaced a little, "That's horrible."

'They're goa'uld. What did you expect?" said Cam bitterly.

"There's one more thing about this that doesn't make sense." said Daniel. "In his last words Jas'ak seems very devoted towards Giya. He goes on about her even though she is gone now. He says…'she hasn't died so there is still hope for those blinded by the goa'uld'."

Cam shrugged, "Sounds just like any first prime raving about his god."

"But that's the thing." said Daniel. "The last line contradicts that completely. From how this goes it sounds like he worked himself up a bit before…" his voice trailed off not stating that Jas'ak's shouting had probably been ended by a rather bloody death.

Sam coughed uncomfortably. "So, um, what did he say?"

Daniel took a second to find the right place among the confusion of elaborate symbols and embellishments, all recording the demise of the Jaffa Jas'ak. "Here." He pointed to the spot and lent forward to read it. "'You say that she is dead and gone'," he said, the voice of the person reading not quite matching the words. "'but I know her. I know the power that she has and you have no idea as to what she is. She will return and she will stop you and your kind. I am Jas'ak, I have fought long and hard for what I believe and I will forever serve the false god, Giya.'"

There was another strained quiet as the dying man's words echoed through the room.

"_False_ god? He said that?" said Cam, confused.

"Yeah." said Daniel. "Doesn't make sense does it."

_NOTE: More and more questions. Please review, what do you think of Jas'ak?_


	14. Reunited

_NOTE: Nice and quick bit mainly with Daniel and Vala but I think it's cute._

**Chapter 14 – Reunited**

Vala was the last to arrive in the briefing room. The bruise on her neck had darkened considerably and some strange shades of yellow and purple had appeared. No more sling but she was holding her arm oddly as if she was trying to move it as little as possible.

"Hello Daniel." she said cheerily as she plonked herself in a chair between Daniel and Teal'c.

"Hey." said Daniel as he looked up from a transcript of the botched interrogation. "I see they've let you out."

"I see they let you in." she retorted playfully. Both she and Daniel missed the looks between the rest of their team full of a mixture of relief and suppressed giggles.

"Yeah, they did." Daniel smiled. "How are you feeling?"

"Glad to get out of the infirmary."

"I hate to break up the reunion people," said Landry slightly louder than need but with a small smile on his face, "but we are here for a reason. SG1 has captured a prisoner that has proven to be a threat. She has also proven that it may not be possible for us to contain her forever. We need to sort out this mess and I mean now people."

"Wait a second." interrupted Vala who had been reading the transcript over Daniel's shoulder. She ripped it out of his hands leaving him with a surprised look on his face. "She tried to get you to believe that she's not a goa'uld."

Landry rolled his eyes but at least they'd gotten a discussion going. "Is that even possible?"

Teal'c folded his hands in front of him, "We have seen technologies before that allow one to be disguised as a goa'uld."

Sam shook her head. "Voice maybe but not the eyes. Plus we searched her while she while she was out of it and we found absolutely nothing."

"She could have been telling the truth about learning it as a kind of trick." said Daniel. He was met with a lot of strange looks. "What?" He looked around at everyone. "It's obvious that she is capable of many things that we thought impossible. It could be _possible_ that all of this is just the result of the biggest misunderstanding in history."

"I'm a little bit shocked that you're taking her side on this." said Cam. "You recognised her and she knew your name. It's _obvious_ that it's been her making your life hell for the last few months."

"Look," Daniel leaned forward seriously, "I'm not saying that we should just forget what she's done," he made a quick glance at Vala, "she'll have to answer for that. But just remember that there are just too many unknowns in this. We can go jumping wildly to conclusions. We know from experience that first impressions can be royally screwed up. I say that we give her the benefit of the doubt that we always seem to need."

After a moments thought Landry said, "Well said Dr Jackson. You're right too. We need to keep our heads in this matter. We can't just jump to the easiest conclusion. We'll get a scan to see if there is a snake rapped around this Giya's neck.

"One way or the other, we will then restart the questions. This time with _clear_ heads. Assumptions and unnecessary prejudice were both contributing factors to what happened earlier." He was looking at Cam as he said that. "It's now nearly lunch time and a lot of us haven't had any rest since the night before last, so, if that's all clear, I want this settled. _Today_!"

_NOTE: I'd love to hear what you think and what you would like from this._


	15. Scan

_NOTE: Exciting, there's a new character in this chapter. Also a flashback._

**Chapter 15 – Scan**

Giya was sitting on the gurney in the middle of the isolation room, hugging her knees against her chest. As SG-1 and General Landry filed into the observation room they took a moment to actually take in her appearance.

Her hair was now a bit of a mess but she had made an effort to brush her fingers through it and tucking it behind her ears and off her face. She had a roundish face sith a straight nose and just a hint of check bones. Her skin was clear and fare, looking like it had never seen a tough day in her life.

At the moment her bark brows where pulled in tight over her green-grey eyes as she gently bit her lip. I looked a bit like she was thinking hard.

She looked young but could have pulled off any age between eighteen and thirty. She didn't look particularly athletic but she was clearly deceptively strong judging by Vala's arm and neck. Her almost delicate looking form had broad shoulders and was capable of holding a commanding presence.

Her clothing looked particularly off in this environment. There were quite simple trousers that weren't too baggy as to in the way of anything. Her was dark brown and reached just below her elbows where the sleaves opened up reviling a tight undershirt of a lighter colour that went all the way to her knuckles. Over those she wore a sleeveless coat that went fell to the backs of her knees and was fastened just bellow her sternum by a broad metal clasp.

Over all it looked quite simple but there were hints of regalness about it. Small amounts of intricate embroidery around the cuffs and hems. Delicate inlays adorned metal clasps and buckles.

"Who are you sending in there?" asked Sam.

"One Doctor Pental," said Landry, "she's new and I'm told that she's good at striking up chat with her patients."

*****

What had happened? For goodness sake why couldn't she remember?

Giya racked her brains trying to think. She had found Jas'ak in the sanctuary right after the Jaffa had come through the gate. That was right. They had heard something the Jaffa at the door. But what had happened then?

Was Jas'ak alright? Was he even alive? No, he had to be. She wouldn't even going think that he was… He couldn't have been taken from her as well. But if she had been in the sarcophagus for too long he may have died anyway. She let out a little sigh. She would have thought she'd be used to it at this stage.

The door opened and in came one of those blasted men with weapons and a woman in a white coat who was wheeling a machine of sorts on a metal trolley. Giya quickly swung her legs over the side of the bed, sitting up straight and proud.

"Hello there." said the woman cheerily. "Don't mind him," she nodded towards the man with the gun, "he's just here to make sure you don't try to kill me. So if you don't you'll be fine. My name's Dr Pental." She smiled broadly. Dr Pental was young with a shock of black hair cut short and messy and large brown eyes with a constant sparkle in them.

"Doctor…" said Giya slowly. She thought that it was an odd name.

"Oh," said Pental quickly. "It's a title. It means that I'm a healer."

Giya started at her for a bit. "I was missing blood." She said quietly.

"How on Earth did you know that?" Pental didn't sound surprised or shocked, more delighted at learning something new. "We took it for testing."

"You take blood to test?" She didn't know quite what to think of this woman but she just nodded. "Seems off." Giya mumbled half to herself.

"Okay now," said Pental, almost bouncing as she clapped her hands together, "time to get to business. I've been told to take an ultrasound of your neck to look for a goa'uld symbiode." She indicated the machine. "This is an ultrasound; it's something that we use to get an image of what we can't see inside someone." Pental was still smiling at Giya as if she were talking to a small child. If only she'd know how much older than her Giya was, and how much more she'd gone through.

"What do I have to do"? asked Giya still a bit disturbed by this chatty woman.

"Just sit there. Don't worry, it doesn't hurt at all." Pental walked up beside Giya and put her hands on the back of the alien's neck as if she were any other patient and not one that had already landed one person in the infirmary and was now under armed guard.

She gently pulled back the collar of Giya's coat and shirts to reveal the nobly bones of her neck. She saw the fine chain of a necklace running across Giya's pale skin and she gently pulled that away as well. Doing this pulled the pendant out from under Giya's shirt. "Oh, now what a pretty little thing."

/-----\

_The chubby little hands of a child reached up to grasp the pendant that her father dangled playfully above her head._

_"Do you know what this is my little Giya?" he asked with his voice full of love._

_The child's laughter rang out like a bell as she tried to catch the dancing pendant, her mind far away from her father's words._

_"This is no normal little trinket." He said, letting his daughter take hold of it. "You know that we're not like the others. They all strive through the universe, exploring. We have a home where we truly belong and that," he pointed at the pendent, "is our way home."_

_The child deftly turned it over in her fingers. It was made of a strange reddish metal that was twisted into an intricate design of tangled twigs. Half a dozen or so blossoms were nestled in it, each inlayed with a tiny red jewel._

_"One day I'll take you there." He ran his fingers through Giya's dark hair. "You'd like it I think. I went there once, just once, long ago. Maybe one day we can go there for good. It's a wonderful place. Our's are a good people, they are kind. The capital is beautiful, there's no crime, no poverty, no war… One day…I'll take our little family away from here."_

\-----/

Giya quickly tucked the pendant back under her shirt. "It's just a trinket, silly thing…" her voice trailed off.

"Okay," said Pental who'd already moved on, "this is going to be a bit cold." She grabbed the gel off the trolley and spread some on the back of Giya's neck.

Giya was puzzled. "Aren't you scared of me?"

Pental shook her head calmly as she set up the ultrasound. "No, I've got my friend here with the gun in case you go at me but I don't think you will. You seem nice enough. I tell you what; I would have given anything to have had an armed airman when I was doing night shifts at the clinic, now _that's_ scary." She pressed the ultrasound against Giya's neck and started adjusting the machine in ways that Giya didn't understand.

"Most people seem to be scared of me."

"Well that's what flashy eyes and a weird voice will do sometimes." said Pentel nonchalantly.

Was this woman insane? Sometimes Giya couldn't understand humans. "You know what happened?"

"Yeah," she said, "Vala told me. She was going a bit insane in the infirmary and needed a bit of a chat, a lot of the patients do. This lot aren't very used to sitting still for too long you see."

Giya choked a little but not enough to see. "That woman, I hurt her?"

"Not badly," Pental didn't seem to sense the gravity in anything, "she's out now but won't be going off world for a week or so. Well," she examined a monitor that Giya couldn't see closely, "it looks like you were telling the truth. No symbiode." She handed Giya a piece of paper towel and started to pack away the ultrasound.

*****

On the other side of the one way mirror Cam leaned over to Daniel and whispered, "I'll tell you what Jackson, I really wasn't expecting you to be right on this one."

"_Does this mean that I'll actually get to talk to you Daniel?_"

Looking through the glass he could swear that she was staring right at him again. He really should stop expecting things in this job to be predictable.

_NOTE: Review and suggestions please._


	16. Trip

_NOTE: Things are still moving a little slow but in a chapter or two things are about to start moving._

**Chapter 16 – Trip**

A few minutes later Cam and two airmen came into the room. Pental had left and Giya had had time to clean herself up.

"Stand up and put you hands behind your back." said Cam coldly.

Giya sighed and complied. "Do you have a name that I can call you?" she asked as Cam hand-cuffed her.

"Colonel Cameron Mitchell." He said, clicking the cuffs on just a bit tighter than they need to be.

Giya winched slightly as she felt her wrists start to bruise. "I thought we were over the whole retraining thing."

"We're going for a little trip." He roughly turned her to face the door. "Move." He gave her a bit of a shove forward.

As Giya walked out of the room she saw her first sights of the SGC apart from her room. It wasn't very pleasant. It was all grey and artificial light with no air that wasn't stale with confinement. For the thousandth time she longed to be in the open streets of Ionara again. There wouldn't be much to see now though. "What kind of world is this? Don't you ever get sun and sky?"

"Keep moving." said Cam as he gave her another shove in the back.

Giya stumbled, "Alright." She walked down the corridor with an airman on either side and Cam gripping her arm, steering her around the twists and turns. She was wondering where they were going but thought better than to ask.

As they marched through the base they passed the elevator. As they went by the doors slid open revealing Daniel and Vala.

"Wait!" Giya stopped walking, resisting Cam's tug on her arm. "I just want to talk to them."

Cam glared icily at her for a moment and then looked to Daniel and Vala. "You okay with this?" his voice was clipped but full of concern for his two friends.

Daniel nodded, "Yeah." he turned to Vala, "What about you?"

Vala had turned white as a sheet. It was the first time that she'd seen this woman face to face and conscious. She would have much rather there were some thick steal bars between the two of them when this happened. She swallowed and felt the bruise on her neck throb. She could say no and they would just walk on but she couldn't. She had made up her mind that she wasn't going to keep running. Very slowly she managed to nod.

"Keep this quick." Cam said sharply to Giya.

"Your name is Vala isn't it?" Giya said, "I recognise you."

Vala swallowed again. "Is that so?" she said hoarsely.

Giya couldn't really think of what she could say and stumbled over her own words for a moment before she actually said anything. "I was scared. I don't remember how I got into that sarcophagus. I didn't know who you were or what you wanted with me."

Vala didn't say anything, she just stared on through.

Giya wished she could just open up her mind and show them exactly what she wanted them to know. Most of her life had been spent in her ascended body where you didn't have to worry about silly things like talking. "I've been living in a world…well…lived in a world where the best way out of a situation like that is to show that you are stronger than everyone else, to show that they are meant to fear you."

Vala nodded again.

"Vala," she took a step forward earning her a warning clanking from the two guns aimed on her but she ignored it. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I've been looking for Daniel, for you all for so long, it's important that you learn to trust me," she then looked right into Daniel's eyes, "because I didn't just search you out to get me out of that crypt. I have a warning and you are not going to be able to hear it until you know that I would never lie to you."

Daniel stared right back into her eyes. He couldn't look away. There was something wrong about those grey-green eyes. Nothing about the way they looked, about the way the moved. It was as if there was something wrong with who was looking through them. As if Giya wasn't entirely there. It almost hurt him to look at her and as hard as he tried not to, he couldn't help but feel pity welling up inside him towards her.

Thankfully after a moment she looked back to Vala. "There is a way that I can show you that I'm sorry," she looked to Cam nervously, "but I need my hands free."

"Aw, hell no!" scoffed Cam, "I can't believe that you thought we'd fall for that."

"Daniel," Giya said with a hint of desperation, "you remember me. Somewhere in the back of your mind you remember me from the time that you were ascended. You felt _sorry_ for me, for what I was. You know that I can be trusted. You know that right now you have to get the others to trust me so they will actually hear what I have to say. Please tell me that you can find that place where those thoughts are."

Daniel paused for a moment and Giya could almost see the conflicting thoughts running through his mind.

"Mitchell," he said slowly, not shifting his gaze, "I think she's telling the truth. I think we can trust her."

Cam gritted his teeth. "You sure about this Jackson?" He saw Daniel nod firmly. "It's up to Vala then." He was sure that she wouldn't want Giya loose around her.

But Cam had underestimated how much Daniel's trust in Giya mattered to her. She didn't want to run anymore and Daniel was the one that had shown her that she didn't have to. If he knew that Giya was safe then she trusted her too. "Okay…Okay Colonel, let her go."

For a moment Cam considered not doing it but he did trust Daniel and the airmen where there. He wasn't totally beyond reason. He took out the keys and unlocked the cuffs.

"Ouch." Giya said quietly as she rubbed her wrists.

"Do whatever it is you're going to do." said Vala, putting out her chin to show she wasn't scared.

Giya took a deep breath and stepped in front of Vala. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I hope that this will make it up to you." Slowly, so she didn't spook anyone, she reached across with one hand and touched the bruise on Vala's throat. Vala flinched but Giya didn't break the contact. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching inside of herself for those bright lights.

The others didn't have a clue what was happening. The airmen shifted their weight nervously.

The first thing they noticed was the red mark around Giya's wrist from the handcuffs gradually faded away to her normal skin tone. Then, suddenly, Vala's eyes widened as she felt Giya's finger tips grow warm and then pass that warmth onto her. The bruise on her neck then slowly turned from its darkest black, to purple, to yellow before it faded completely. Vala's injured arm then twitched once, twice. "What the…" Vala was shocked beyond belief. Her throat and arm felt as good as new.

And that was when Giya dropped. Daniel swooped forward and caught her.

"I'm fine." she murmured as she tried to shake him off and get up under her own power. "Just a little out of practice."

Daniel insisted on helping her up to her feet and she smoothed down the front of her cloths.

"You spend some time in a sarcophagus where everything is regulated for you and then you nearly collapse at fixing a bruise and a sprain." she laughed nervously, flexing her fingers.

Daniel shifted uneasily. "Giya," he said, "do you actually know how long you were in there?"

She shook her head. "No." She noticed that Daniel wasn't meeting her gaze. "Daniel? Do you know?"

"Well…" he had no idea how to tell her. Something told him that this was going to be far from good news for her. "We found a document that related to one of the events in your life to a known event in history. Now we don't have an exact date, it's all based on pretty…"

"Daniel," she interrupted, "how long?"

Daniel looked up at her and saw the anguish. Not in her face, just her eyes. He doubted she would ever let anything show on her face. "We think it's been about a thousand years. I'm sorry."

So many emotions flicked over her eyes so quickly before she managed to shield them completely. Locking out any way Daniel would be able to reach her. She turned back to Cam, "Where were we going?"

"The infirmary." he replied gently. Even he couldn't help but worry about her and what was going on behind her still face. "I don't think that we'll need the handcuffs anymore."

_NOTE: Review and suggestions please._


	17. Lunch

_NOTE: Little bit of a break and consolidating. Just a quick team thing._

**Chapter 17 – Lunch**

The team sat down at a table in the mess with trays in hand. Everyone, (apart from Daniel who had had dinner before a failed attempt to sleep the night before) hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday before they had left for Aberon.

"So where is she now?" asked Vala.

"In the infirmary." Replied Cam as he dug in. "From there she'll be taken to guest quarters under guard and we'll have a bit of a chat with her soon." He pointed his fork at Daniel, "I'm trusting you on this one Jackson. Are you sure about her?"

Daniel shrugged, "Strangely yes. There's something so strangely familiar about her and I know that I can trust her." He took a bite of his food.

"You believe you know her from your time amongst the ascended?" asked Teal'c.

Daniel nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I think so."

"We have also seen similar healing abilities to her's before."

"You think that she's an ancient?"

"It is possible."

Daniel shrugged, "I guess so. But I've never heard of an ancient having two bodies before, whatever _that_ means."

Cam knitted his brow. "What do you think about this whole two bodies thing Sam? Real or some elaborate trick?"

Sam let out a breath as she shrugged. "I'm not sure. I mean, the way that she explained it to you in the time that she had was that she had a physical body and one that was ascended and she was able to transfer her consciousness from one to the other at will, leaving the other in – what I would assume – is something like a brain dead state. Now I have absolutely not idea how someone could have two bodies in the first place, let alone why. The way I understood it, people ascend to move on from physical existence. Daniel should be more of an expert on the subject than I am though. What do you think Daniel?"

"Well," Daniel had a note in his voice that told he didn't fully understand what he was saying, "I never even considered it…but I trust her…so I guess I do believe it's possible."

"You think she's an ancient?" asked Cam.

He shrugged, "I don't know. Like I said, I recognise her, I trust her but I don't know anything about her."

Vala was absentmindedly running her fingers over the perfectly clear skin of her neck. "Whatever she is she's defiantly hiding a lot."  
"Doesn't she have a right to?!" said Daniel indignantly, "I mean, she made a mistake, she's obviously sorry for it." He indicated Vala's neck which she immediately stopped touching with a sheepish look on her face. "What right do we have now to dig up every little bit of her life. Can't she be allowed to keep some of those deep dark secrets to herself? Do we have every painful memory just so we can feel that little bit more secure!? For God's sake," he let out a humourless laugh, "she's just found out she's been unconscious foe a _thousand_ years!"

"Gees, Jackson." Cam said, shocked at his friends actions, "Why are you acting like this?"

Daniel's angry expression froze and his eyes widened as he saw just what he was doing. "I…I don't know what…"

"Anyway," Cam continued, "who says we're going to do that? We just want to know _who_ she is."

Daniel put his elbows on the table and cradled his head in his hands. He gave a small moan and said, "I think you're going to have to. This doesn't make any SENSE!" Daniel slammed his fist down onto the table making everyone jump.

"Okay," Cam said slowly, "let's just _calm_ down. We've got sometime before we have to go and talk to her. I say we all have something to eat and just take a moment to…clear our heads."

"Yeah," Daniel rubbed his temple, "you're right on that."

_NOTE: Review and suggestions please._


	18. News

_NOTE: *Evil laugh* something a liiiitttle different._

**Chapter 18 – News**

A chime sounded to alert Adria that someone was at the door. Her eyes snapped open and flared. She hated being interrupted when she was meditating. Standing up she reached across the room with her mind and opened the door. "This had better be good Kalsen!" she snapped at the commander who stood at the door. "You know I am not to be interrupted."

Kalsen's words tripped over one another as they tried to get out. He hadn't known that she had been meditating. "Yes Orici," he managed to get out. "I've…I've just received an intelligence report from one of the converted planets."

"Could it not have waited?" Adria stared down Kalsen. "What was so important about it?"

"Well Orici," he stumbled, "there is unrest among a group that claim to be the descendents of those that served one of the false gods that previously ruled this galaxy."

"Is the word of Origin weakening in their hearts?" Adria couldn't afford unrest to spread and undermine their cause.

"No Orici." Kalsen said quickly, "It is as strong as ever. It was they who told us of what transpired."

"Continue." Adria said softly. Now she was curious.

"They go to a planet named Aberon occasionally to gather medicinal plants. This planet is rumoured to be the place where this false god was trapped in a deep sleep."

"What use are legends of false gods to the Ori?"

"Well Orici, they travelled there two days ago and found that there were foot prints of others that had been there. They followed them to a ruin that no one has entered for as long as they know, for fear of angering the demons that trapped their false god. A few younger ones had the courage to enter the main chamber where they found illumination devices that we know are used by the humans of earth."

Adria thought for a moment. "You are sure?"

"Yes Orici." Kalsen replied quickly.

Adria thought for a moment more. "Set a new course to this Aberon. I want to find out what interested the Earthlings about that place."

"Yes Orici." Kalsen put his fist over his heart and bowed.

"Kalsen," Adria added as he was about to leave, "there were many false gods in this galaxy before we brought their salvation. What was the name of this one?"

Kalsen turned back to face Adria, "The report gave the name of Giya, Orici."

Adria stepped up close to Kalsen, "Are you absolutely sure?" she said, her voice almost enraged. "Know that if you lie I will know."

"Yes…Yes Orici." Kalsen bumbled. "The report was quite clear."

Adria broke her stare and started to pace feverishly.

After a silence of about a minute Kalsen risked saying something. "Shall I instruct the Prior to head for Aberon?"

"No," Adria said, "forget Aberon. I will change the heading myself. The Ori are grateful for your work this day Kalsen. You are dismissed."

"Thankyou Orici." Kalsen bowed again, grinning. He turned and left Adria's quarters with the comforting weight of the Ori's blessing on his shoulders.

_NOTE: So what do you think of Kalsen?_


	19. Race

_NOTE: Lots in this about Giya._

**Chapter 19 – Race**

Giya sat quietly in her new, brightly lit quarters. In the infirmary she had been prodded and pocked for over an hour. They had taken away more of her blood by pressing a hollow metal tube through her skin to the vein and letting it flow out into a clear vial. They had attached wires from a monitor to her head and gotten her to move to her ascended body. They had her change into simple blue garments called scrubs and take of the pendant because it was metal and had her lie down in a large, white tube that made very loud noises called an MRI and they had done so many other things that she didn't even try to understand or remember. She had done everything they had asked and through the whole thing she hadn't said a word.

She sat on the bed in the new clothes that had been given to her. A black t-shirt under a loose blue short sleaved shirt. Blue pants and heavy black boots. Her old things wherein a chest of draws next to the door. She had her pendant in-between her fingers, absentmindedly turning it around and around. Just like the first time her father had let her play with it.

One thousand years.

There was no way that she could ever see Jas'ak again. He had probably died in the slaughter anyway. What did she miss him as anyway? As an ally, a fried or whatever it had been turning into at the end? His marriage had been one of convenience, giving his childhood friend a place in society but he genuinely loved his daughter. That poor little child had probably grown old and died. Giya wondered if she had had any children. There could be some distant descendent of Jas'ak's somewhere. There wouldn't be anything left of him though. Nearly two hundred generations would have diluted anything she would recognise.

All the planets will have shifted. New stars will have formed and old ones will have faded. This was a new universe. She's been born into a new life. Now she had to find a way to forget all of the living she's done before.

She knew she couldn't. She had sworn she would never sleep like that again the last time because she knew she could never forget. How many times had she restarted her life now? Never, _never_ had a single on of them felt like it was her's. Not even this one just a few hours old. Though there was that one… Ionara…Henutal…Primera…

There was a soft knock on the door and it opened. Daniel and Colonel Mitchell were standing there. The airman guarding her door was just visible in the background.

"Can we come it?" Daniel asked.

Giya just shrugged as she refasten the pendant around her neck and tucked it away safely. The two men took that as a yes and entered. They closed the door and took seats in front of her.

"Giya we're here to talk." said Daniel as he tilted his head in an attempt to catch her downward gaze. "Do you like the room? It's a bit of a thankyou for what you did for Vala. It was quite a trick you pulled off there."

Giya looked up at him. "It's just how I was born."

"That's kinda what we need to talk to you about." said Cam. "We need to know who you are, well, what you are and why you can do what you can do." He then took out a recorder, turned it on and placed it on the bedside table.

"You need to know about my species?" said Giya, managing to find a kind of strange humour about it.

Daniel made a shrug that morphed into a reluctant nod. "Pretty much, yeah."

Giya coughed and brushed her hair out of her eyes as she gathered her thoughts. "Well, it's all a bit complicated." She thought for another moment. "I wasn't born into a society of my own people…but I did know them for a while…Let me try again. How much do you know about the race that seed life in this galaxy?"

Cam palmed this one off to Daniel who rubbed the back of his neck. "That's also a bit…complicated." So he told her of what they knew of the Ancients. Their split from the Ori as Alterans, the populating of the Milky Way, the plague, the trip to the Pegasus galaxy, their return to Earth and eventual ascension. All the while Giya nodded and encouraged him to continue every time he paused to let her start her side of the story. "And that's pretty much the condensed history of the Ancients."

Giya nodded solemnly once more and sniffed – her face still perfectly impassive but for the small line between her eyebrows – and said, "It's actually quite close to the history that I know. You're just missing out one chapter of it."

"Really?" Daniel leaned forward in his seat, eager to hear. Mitchell hoped that he wouldn't throw caution to the wind for a history lesson.

"What you now call the Ori home galaxy was not the original home of the Ancients." began Giya. "Humanoid life first evolved, or at least for the first know time, in another galaxy called Primera millions and millions of years ago."

Daniel couldn't believe what he was hearing. If Giya was telling the truth – and he knew she was – she was giving him information more valuable than he could have ever dreamed of.

"They evolved and spread through out Primera but a distinction formed between two groups. Most were quite content to remain where they were but many had dreams of flying out into the stars, through the void between galaxies and explore a new home. There was no animosity between the two groups and the adventures departed as friends to the now Ori home galaxy.

"Countless generations passed and those that left evolved into the Ori and Alterans and those left behind evolved into the Furlings," she gave a small shrug, "my race."

_NOTE: Please don't hate me. That's just the way it worked out in my head. Reviews and suggestions please._


	20. WHAT?

_NOTE: I haven't got reviews yet so I don't know how the whole Furling thing is going at the moment. This is another short chapter with reactions before Giya tells her story._

**Chapter 20 – WHAT!?!?!?**

"WHOA, whoa!" Cam held up his hands to stop her. "You're a _Furling_?"

Giya nodded, "Pretty much."

Daniel couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So you're from one of the four great races?"

A pained expression flashed through her eyes for a moment. "The alliance of the four great races, it…it's no more than a title now."

Daniel was confused, "What do you mean."

"Well," Giya squirmed for a moment, "the Asgard have their own problems; the Nox refuse to get involved with anyone outside their own for fear of associating themselves with violence; the Ancients wouldn't lift a finger to help anyone." her voice suddenly filled with spite and Daniel couldn't help an unjustified anger welling up in his chest. "As for the Furlings…they're gone."

Cam didn't understand, "What do you mean gone? You're here."

"I did say it was complicated." Her voice had become distant again.

Cam suddenly made a connection. "We did have a theory that you were an Ancient. Turns out we were pretty close."

"Well," Giya responded, "there are…were quite a lot of differences in evolution between the two races so there are a few variations. We have higher healing abilities, we're also disposed to be slightly taller. Probably the biggest difference though, is that Furlings can't ascend."

Daniel narrowed his eyes, "What do you mean? I thought that _all_ beings had that ability."

"Well technically yes." The pain flashed in her eyes again, "After the Ancients left, Furlings developed a type of block when our minds subconsciously sensed that a higher plane of existence was a hostile environment in Primera. It wasn't until around ten thousand years ago, when the wraith were sieging the city of Atlantis, when they found out why."

"How could a higher plane be hostile…come to think of it, how could you have an ascended body if your race can't ascend?" asked Daniel.

"Well that's all in the next part of the story."

Cam leaned forward, "Then how about you tell us the next part of the story."

Giya closed her straining eyes, preparing to tell her own history.

_NOTE: Review and suggestions please._


	21. Tale

_NOTE: Well, here is the start of Giya's story._

**Chapter 21 – Tale**

"After the Alterans separated themselves from the Ori, they became paranoid about the fact that they had lost contact with the Furlings. They had parted on good terms but they didn't want to loose that part of their heritage like they had with their falling out with the Ori."

Everyone was now in the briefing room listening to Giya's tale. As a show of good faith there were no armed personnel assigned to guard her but Cam was watching her like a hawk.

While everyone else was sitting, Giya was standing at the head of the table gripping the back of one of the chairs. "They managed to make contact with Primera. They say there was dancing in the streets of the capital – Ionara on the planet Henutal – when they got the news of their long lost kin.

"A delegation of over two hundred was sent to the Milky Way so that there would always be contact between the two civilisations. There was always a seat for a Primeran on the Alteran council.

"When the plague hit the Primerans were found to be immune due to their more effective healing abilities but many died trying to heal too many of the others. It's said that: They spread their light so thin that it no longer was the defeater of darkness, but shadow would fall over the light.

"The descendants of the Primerans that survived left with the Ancients in Atlantis. At this point contact with the Furlings was only every hundred years or so. By the time I was born my father had been to the capital, but not his father or grandfather.

"I was born in the last years of the siege. The two hundred delegated had seen a population boom but then whittled down to just three. My mother, Saria died when I was less than a month old which left myself, my father, Mansel, and my sister, Larya.

"My father held the Primeran seat on the council but he had no influence whatsoever. It was just an old tradition that needed to be appeased and for some reason they thought that it was a tradition that needed to continue." Giya shut her eyes for a moment, trying to push the emotions she had deep down so that no one would see them. "After the death of my mother it was decided that I couldn't be allowed to die. Ever.

"They made a clone of my body. There was no memory or thought in it. It was just allowed to grow at a normal rate until I reached the age of twelve. One day then, they placed me in a machine that would allow me to ascend. I had trained for it all my life and it worked.

"What happened next is a bit hard to explain. Because the clone body was in a way compatible with me, I was able to fuse a part of my consciousness to it. Like tying a piece of string to two different cups and being able to travel across it and exist in one or the other.

"Now because Furlings can heal so well we have no natural life span I would be able to live indefinitely anyway but if my physical body was killed I could still exist in my ascended form."

"That's an _incredible_ concept." said Sam with a sense of wonder in her voice. "It's essentially a way of achieving immortality."

"It's _barbaric_!" Giya snapped. Her words stung like a snake strike. "In theory it works fine, but for ten _thousand_ years I have lived with one part of myself missing so that it can hold onto my other form. I don't know a way of reversing it so I have lived with a piece of my spirit missing so that the Ancients could feel good about not alienating another group of their own kind."

Everyone was shocked by the malice and spite in her voice. She had changed from calm and impartial to enraged and spiteful so quickly that no one could respond.

"Perhaps," Landry said eventually, "you could continue your story. We are still waiting to hear how it is you found yourself in a goa'uld sarcophagus and this warning that you have gone through such great pains – for yourself and Dr Jackson – to deliver."

"Yes, you're right." Giya took a shaking breath to calm herself. "I was twelve years old. Our family lived on while the war with the wraith wore on. Saria and I insisted on joining the fight when we were old enough so that we were actually making a difference instead of sitting in Atlantis as reminders of a long gone effort.

"One of our assignments was on a planet that the wraith were advancing on where we were to collect some scientists in a research station. We had underestimated the speed of the wraith ships. Saria was killed in the attack and when I arrived home with her body my father made a decision.

"The Ancients didn't need us. His wife and daughter were dead and his remaining daughter…well…I had been changed. It was then that the two of us left. Atlantis had never been a home to us and it was in the nature of our people to live in our true home so we returned to Primera.

"It was the first time I had had any contact with my people outside my family and it really did feel like home."

"Wait," said Cam, "I remember. You said that around the time of that around the time of the siege was when the Furlings found out about some sort of enemy."

"That's right." said Giya, "They were discovered a few years before we arrived and they were thought not to be a threat but we were happy. Happier than we had ever been. They were creatures that had evolved on a higher plane and survived by feeding on energy of the physical plane.

"Originally they were insignificant but a few months after we came home a planet on the fringe of the galaxy was lost to them. Within a year every planet had been decimated except for Henutal onto which they were descending.

"My father managed to adjust us the technology of a fringe scientist from back in Atlantis to create the only weapon effective against them and the only way to stop them.

"The dilemma was that to set it off would destroy every living thing in Primera along with the shadows. They didn't even think twice about it." Giya's eyes seemed to mist over and her voice pulled tight. "They all – hundreds of thousands of them – they were all willing to lay down their lives to stop a force that would otherwise seep unhindered across the universe.

"None of them could leave. Generations of living in close proximity to the shadows meant they had been contaminated in a way. Where ever they went the shadows would have been able to follow. He had to stay behind because he was one of the only ones who knew how to work the device." Giya's face seemed to tighten even more. "So I left on my own just before they set it off. I went back to the only place that I knew, Atlantis.

"Unfortunately the evacuation had already begun. They weren't very happy to see me but let me return to Earth with them. My physical body was put into stasis and I existed in my ascended form."

"How did you get from an Ancient stasis chamber to a Goa'uld sarcophagus?" said Sam, "What would make you want to leave a life of universal knowledge?"

"Well, because I still had a physical form I don't have universal knowledge. It can hardly be described as a satisfying life.

"I don't know how much time passed, I sort of faded in and out but I watched what happened in the physical universe. I watched this galaxy fall into chaos as the goa'uld took hold, I watched as Anubis as he steadily gained power and knowledge and I watched the others do nothing about it. So I revived myself and returned to physical existence nine thousand years after leaving it."

_NOTE: Review and suggestions._


	22. Remember

_NOTE: Here we go, this is the second half of the tale. Was the last bit confusing or easy to follow?_

**Chapter 22 – Remember**

"We have some information on you from that time." said Daniel.

"What sort of information?" asked Giya.

"Um," Daniel fished around in a pile of papers, "here." He pulled out a photocopy of the parchment on Jas'ak that he'd found and handed it to her.

She took it from him and started to read as everyone watched. They watched her face began to strain as she read it. She made a choking swallow and almost slammed the paper down on the table to get it away from her. "This is real?" was all she was able to say.

"It is." Daniel nodded, speaking gently. All her story was familiar and he now understood the pity that he felt. "How did it all happen?"

"I pretended to be a…a goa'uld who was an expert on Ancient technology." Giya was still trying to get her emotions under control. "I rose up in Anubis's ranks and eventually had a position of power. I gave him miniscule bits of information while at the same time I could undermine some of his plans, slow down projects, divert his course.

"Obviously I couldn't just jump into the ranks of the Goa'uld System Lords. I need help, for that I needed Jas'ak. When I met him I was shocked, he was the first Jaffa I had ever met that doubted the goa'uld as gods. I managed to convince him to help me. I trusted him above anyone else, more than I have ever trusted anyone in my life. Together we managed to gather many more Jaffa and turn them to our course. We went to Aberon and found the humans there more than willing to help us.

"After Anubis was killed I guess we just had too many battles to fight." There she stopped.

"Now that is quite the tale," said Landry, "but as you can see in that document, you're supposed to be _dead_." He let out a frustrated breath. It had been a long day and he sensed they were close to the heart of the matter.

"Well…I…" Giya was at a lose. "I don't remember."

"What do you mean you don't remember?" asked Daniel.

"I remember seeing the stargate activate and the Jaffa coming through." Giya screwed her eyes shut and tilted her head to one side as she tried to remember. "They killed everyone they saw. I…I ran back to the sanctuary…"

/-----\

_"Oh, thank goodness you are all right. Have you seen anyone else?"_

\-----/

"…I found Jas'ak…"

/-----\

_"We have to stop them from getting anywhere near this."_

_"Do they even know about it?"_

_"Jas'ak, I can't take that risk. Even if there is just the smallest chance I can't let them have this."_

\-----/

"…We heard the Jaffa breaking through…"

/-----\

_"What was that?"_

_"They'll be in here soon." Jas'ak gripped her arm tightly and he pulled her along the tunnel. She hurtled along behind him in the darkness, not knowing what they could do, until she fell slack to the ground._

_"GIYA!" Jas'ak's voice was strangely distant. Next thing she knew she was watching the stone ceiling fly by. Jas'ak was running down the tunnel with her in his arms._

_"Halt, Jas'ak!" The voice was strange to her and distant as Jas'ak's had been. "You cannot run from us now!"_

_"Tel'nar…I swear…I mean no harm."_

_"Give up Jas'ak. Look what you abandoned your god for has been reduced to."_

_Something warm and damp was seeping along Giya's back and she could feel the lights in her desperately trying to heal something on her side._

_"What about you, why do you fight for Lord Yu instead of the all powerful Mordel?"_

_"Lord Yu liberated our people half a year ago and showed us the light. But I will tell you what happened before that, in the weeks after you vanished. They found my sister and niece running and hiding in the hills. Your wife and child! They were put to death for aiding you. I watched them kill a woman and a female child to death on the steps of Mordel's palace. And now I will avenge them."_

_"Do not do this Tel'nar, we are brothers."_

_The lights in her were like pebbles trying to change the path of a great river. Everything started to grow fainter and the voices faded further into the background._

_"WE ARE NOT BROTHERS! When you left my sister for _this_ we ceased to be brothers but you are right. Our connection does warrant a greater punishment for your sins."_

_Giya noticed Jas'ak bruising grip on her less and less as she drifted away._

_"You have caused the lose of much life already so we will not let you anymore. This pathetic excuse of a god of yours will be allowed to live."_

_She was outside her body now, following that familiar thread. Bellow her she was Jas'ak kneeling on the floor of the sarcophagus room, clutching her bleeding form, surrounded by armed Jaffa with one standing forward addressing him._

_"Jaffa, kree!" the one standing forward order and two stepped forward and pulled Jas'ak to his feet, letting her dying body roll forward. "We will give her a proper funeral and place her in the sarcophagus. My new position in Lord Yu's army allowed me access to much new knowledge. I will be able to prevent her from being able to open the inside." Tel'nar stepped forward so their faces where an inch apart. "You may not have mourned the death of my sister, let us see if you will mourn the life of your god."_

_As everything faded into blackness Giya could just hear Jas'ak's shaking voice. "You wouldn't. No. Tel'nar _no. _NO! GIYA!"_

\-----/

"…and after that I was floating." Giya's expression was far-away, still lost in the fresh memory. "I was stuck in between my two bodies, the sarcophagus prevented me from regaining consciousness but I hadn't properly severed my ties with that form to move to the other." She wasn't looking at anyone in particular and a lot of the team felt almost like they were eavesdropping on her own private mutterings to herself but she didn't stop. "I had absolutely no concept of time. I just caught glimpses of the universe bellow.

"Sometimes, I was able to find the will to manifest but only ever for a few minutes."

She turned and looked straight into Daniel's face. "It was then that I saw Daniel join the ascended. I heard you tell tem your story and I heard them tell you many more, including mine. You were outraged." Giya managed to break a small smile for a moment. "You seemed to have had quite a short fuse then, always fighting, always advocating the other view, always walking that line of theirs. Then I saw you go too far and be cast down, for fighting none other than Anubis himself. I was quite saddened then, I thought the Ancients had finally found someone to break them out of their rut.

"After that I drifted further and further. I could see more and more of the universe."

There was a silent moment.

"And…" Cam was pretty much on the edge of his seat. Weather he liked it or not Giya's story had captured his interest.

"Do you all believe me?" she asked suddenly.

There was another strained pause.

"Well…" Landry said slowly. "All the evidence seems to be in accordance with your story but their isn't much of it. However, I think that if Dr Jackson can vouch for you…it would be enough."

"Daniel?" she turned to Daniel yet again.

For Daniel's part, he was in utter turmoil. All his common sense told his to distrust this woman who had hurt his friend. But she _had_ healed Vala and had seemed genuinely sorry. Above all of that was the story she had just told. It was almost unbelievable but in the back of his mind it was it was all familiar to him, all made perfect sense. He had felt a pull like this before. It was from that dark corner, tucked away in his mind that the few memories of his time as an ascended being had come. At that moment he was pulling as hard as he could against that tug. It felt hopeless, like trying to push a tank up a hill on his own. But suddenly something gave way. "I believe you. Everything that you've said, I believe you." he said, quiet and simple.

Landry nodded. "I think that's good enough everyone." He looked around the table to see nods from everyone in turn. He motioned for her to continue. "Now tell us this warning of yours."

Giya nodded and looked down at her hands for a moment. "Like I said, I was drifting away. I saw you make contact with the Ori – distant cousins of my people – and I saw them sent their crusade. I couldn't do anything about it, all I could do was watch.

"Not too long ago however I was in a sort of daze but I was brought to my senses. At first I thought I was finally going mad, the others didn't seem to be able to hear it. Maybe they couldn't, maybe they just didn't care but I could hear it.

"It was the crashing drum beat of an army preparing for war.

"So I reached out, trying to find someone I knew would be able to help. That was when I found you, Daniel. I was too far gone to manifest myself but I focused all my will, all my energy into passing on two things. 'Help me' and the address of Aberon which was the last place I remembered being.

"Obviously you were able to find me. I've come to tell you that there is an army preparing to run rampant over this galaxy. The Ori are preparing to march. They believe they have enough power to wipe out the Ancients and claim every being in the galaxy as their own. I don't know how long they will be. A month, two maybe. But don't doubt that they will come."

_NOTE: *sniff* Jas'ak!!! So what do you think of that big flashback? Sort of breaks up the telling and does a bit of showing._


	23. Waiting

_NOTE: Another little bit of different._

**Chapter 23 – Waiting**

Adria looked out over the lush green planet floating in the blackness bellow her. They were right at the edge of the galaxy but they hadn't had to travel for very long.

All scans of the planet had been relatively normal. The core of the planet was made of an unknown element but all readings showed that it was perfectly stable. Good, the Earthlings hadn't arrived yet.

"What is it Kalsen?"

Kalsen nearly jumped out of his skin. He was new to this post and was not used to Adria's 'abilities'. There was no way that she could have seen him walk onto the bridge and stand a few feet behind her ready to report. "All of the devices are in place on the planet, Orici. Just as you ordered."

"Thankyou Kalsen, you have done well this day."

"How long are we expecting to have to wait, Orici? I need to know whether I should organise the men guarding the deposit point into shifts."

"Do so." said Adria calmly. "It could be days before she can convince the Earthlings of her knowledge."

"If it is not out of my place, Orici," said Kalsen nervously, "why is this woman so important?"

Adria turned around as calm as ever. She had a plan now and she could see no way it could fail. "This _woman_ is one of the greatest threats that our cause has yet to face, foolish enough to make war with the Ori themselves. Of course there is no way that she can succeed but we can not risk her pulling anyone away from the path. We will be able to turn this enemy into a weapon for out own cause."

Kalsen thumped his fist to his heart and bowed his head with a cry of, "Hallowed are the Ori."

Adria then dismissed him and turned back to the planet. The Ori knowledge in her had told her that Giya had died a thousand years ago. Perhaps that had been a miss interpretation on her part. Maybe Giya had been the ascended equivalent of dead or in a state worse than death. No matter, she was alive now, that Daniel Jackson will have made sure of that. She posed a very real threat to the Ori but they would use her to do the Ori's dirty work for them. A great, energy expending strike wouldn't be needed after all. The Ancients would be destroyed by their own creation and this galaxy would be their's for the taking.

_NOTE: I think I have a bit of a soft spot for Kalsen. Review and suggestions. Seriously, I would love some suggestions._


	24. Night

_NOTE: Originally this chapter was just a few words between Giya and Teal'c as she was working but it sort of blossomed into this. There's a really good flashback in this._

**Chapter 24 – Night**

It had been late and Landry had suggested they break for the night before they discussed these matters further. Most of the team were exhausted and liked the idea of calling it a night. Teal'c however was satisfied with his latest dose of Tretonin and had already had his required amount of sleep. Giya's story had intrigued him and he was heading towards her quarters to speak to her.

The halls that he walked through were almost deserted. A janitor mopping the floor. Two technicians adjusting some systems. The base had turned in for the night.

Giya opened the door as soon as he knocked. "Oh," she seemed a little shocked at seeing him, "you're Teal'c aren't you?"

Teal'c nodded courteously, "I am. Were you expecting to see someone else?"

"Actually I was thinking you might be Daniel."

"I was also expecting you to be sleeping."

"Well I think I've slept enough for a while."

No one said anything for a moment.

"Perhaps I could enter?" said Teal'c. "There are matters that I wish to discus with you."

"Oh, of course." Giya said, stepping aside to let Teal'c past. "I'm sorry. I'm just a little…well nervous around Jaffa."

Teal'c silently indicated for her to sit at the small table in the room. When she was seated he sat himself opposite her. "You said earlier today that you had many Jaffa as part of your cause."

"Well I guess that was a bad way to put it." Out of her regal dress Giya's manor was quite different. Her shoulders were more forward as she seemed to crumple up her chest cavity. She held her head much lower and her voice was much softer too. All in all she appeared meek and almost inconsequential now. "I should have said that I'm nervous around Jaffa I don't know. All of the Jaffa on our side were either known very closely by myself or…or Jas'ak…" her eyes just seemed to miss Teal'c's face as her thoughts drifted and her voice suddenly grew strained.

"It is your story of Jas'ak that has brought me here."

"Can I ask you something?" Giya said abruptly.

Teal'c was shocked for a moment but inclined his head for her to continue.

"Is all of this planet like," she look around the sparsely furnished concrete box that was her room, "this?" The line between her brows deepened. "There's no sun, no sky, nothing is green.

"I saw such vision in Daniel when he was ascended. I don't know how he could get it if _this_ is what he was fighting for all that time."

Teal'c took a moment to think over Giya's words before he grasped his hands together and replied. "Do not worry Giya. The facility is built underground to keep the Stargate of this world safe and a secret. I have seen much of the outside in my time on this planet and the surface holds as much natural beauty as other worlds."

Giya nodded to herself, "That makes sense."

"However," Teal'c leaned on the word, "the determination of Daniel Jackson and all other warriors of this world do not simply fight for their planet, but for the freedom of everyone on it and every human that they find. Not only humans, but for all beings that they encounter. They are noble people."

Giya's gaze seemed permanently distant now. "It seems I've always been fighting. I think that I've never fought for anything." She looked at Teal'c but she was thinking to hard to see.

Teal'c surprisingly broke a small, gentle smile. "I would not worry over it. You would not have come to warn us of the Ori if you were not fighting for something. One day I think that you will find out."

Giya wasn't very convinced but quickly changed the subject. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"

Noting Giya's avoidance, Teal'c decided not to press her. This was something she was going to have to find in herself. "It concerns the Jaffa you knew, Jas'ak." He could see the muscles in Giya's neck constrict but her face remained the same. "You morn him greatly do you not?"

Giya couldn't trust herself to do more than nod. Even the mention of his name mad her stomach twist painfully. It had been a thousand years since he had died but in a way for her, it had literally been yesterday since she saw his face.

"You were close?"

Nod.

"I know what it is to lose one that you care about but I no longer morn my wife…I am now glad I knew her in the time that she had."

Giya didn't say anything for a long time. "Um…" she managed to choke out, "Thankyou…I…I guess…" She was struggling to keep together. She inhaled in a choking sob that she desperately tried to suppress.

Teal'c wasn't finished yet, "I would, however, have you know this. Jas'ak fought for the freedom of the galaxy from the goa'uld did he not?"

Two nods. Jas'ak had always had such dreams but had had to settle for simply making life for the goa'uld as difficult as possible. Though he would never admit it, it was killing him inside that he couldn't do more.

"Know that finally his cause has come to pass. What both of you fought for is now a reality."

Giya thought back to her first years of knowing Jas'ak and gave a small, far off smile. He had so much passion. He would tell her of the worlds that he imagined for everyone and never failed to inspire her. She would always look up at him in wonder. "I remember when I first met him."

/-----\

_"IN THE NAME OF MORDEL, EXIT YOUR HOMES." The booming voice that could only belong to a Jaffa echoed through the village. Giya peeked through a crack in the door to see a large group of Jaffa marching down the main road, opening doors to see if there was anyone still inside. "Who are they?" she asked as she turned back to Cenla who had been housing her for the past few days._

_"They are the soldiers of Mordel." Cenla answered in a frantic whisper as she ran her hands over each other. "They check in on the village every few weeks to discourage unrest and collect produce. They shouldn't be here for a few more days, after the harvest of the southern fields. If I had known they would be hear now I would never have agreed to have you here." She was starting to panic now. "If they find you…"_

_Giya grasped Cenla's aged hands in both of her own and spoke in a calming voice, "Peace now Cenla. You should make your way out onto the street so they do not enter. I will make my way out unnoticed. You need not fear. No one will ever know I was here."_

_Cenla squeezed Giya's hands. "All power be to your cause Giya."_

_The two women said hurried farewells and Cenla made her way outside, being careful to close the door behind her._

_"_You took your time old woman. What were you doing in there?_" said the suspicious voice of a Jaffa through the door._

_"_Oh,_" replied Cenla, "_My old bones are not as spry as they once were and I had to douse the fire. No good an unattended flame burning down the whole village._" Cenla had raised her voice a little at the end of her sentence._

_"_I think we will have a look inside. Jas'ak…_"_

_"_There is no need._" Cenla interrupted hurriedly._

_"_Do you have anything to hide, old woman?_" The Jaffa questioned suspiciously._

_Giya looked out the back window only to see people filing down the street that the house backed onto. Not that way then._

_"_No._" said Cenla as if he had just insulted her._

_Giya took a quick look at the small gap between the house she was in and the next. She considered climbing onto the roof of the next house and finding a window to get in through but the amount of time it would take would mean it would mean it would be likely that she would be spotted._

_"_Well then. Jas'ak!_" There was the sound of gravel crunching as someone stepped forward. "_Have a look inside._"_

_Dam it. Giya dashed through to the next room in the two room house which was a small bedroom. She hoped that this Jas'ak would only look to see if the fire had recently been extinguished._

_The door creaked open and then closed. Giya tried to breathe as quietly as possible. She was pressed against the wall behind the door hoping that if he did look in the bedroom it would only be a quick glance and he wouldn't see her. She could hear Jas'ak's boots clunk on the floor. One…two…three. He stopped. The boots then made a grinding noise as he turned one way…then the other. Giya pressed her arm against her own mouth in an attempt to muffle her breathing with her clothing. The boots began to march again._

_She had sworn she wouldn't go back._

_The boots were getting closer._

_She would never go back to the others._

_The door to the bedroom creaked open. Giya pressed herself as flat as she could against the wall but the door kept moving. Eventually the door touched the toe of her foot and she could fell the pressure on it as the Jaffa tried to push it further._

_Giya sighed as she heard the zat'ni'katel being primed. The door was pulled away to reveal an armed Jaffa._

_"So," Giya said. She sounded almost confident mainly due to the fact that she knew when she was backed into an inescapable corner. "Are you going to kill me then?" She would be returning to the judging thoughts of the others soon enough._

_Jas'ak's face remained still._

_"What are you waiting for?" Giya wouldn't be caught cowering at death anymore. "Do it!" she said in a dramatic whisper._

_Still Jas'ak remained still as he watched her._

_"I won't be taken prisoner!" This Jaffa's stern stare was starting to unnerve her. "I'll run and fight and you will have to kill me."_

_"Why?"_

_"What?" Jas'ak's sudden ability to speak shocked her. She also didn't understand what he meant._

_He stepped forward, closer to her, "Why would you fight?"_

_She didn't really know what to say. "Because I vowed to fight your _gods_. I won't lay down and submit like the rest of you." She may as well let off some of the frustration that had been building up inside of her. Cenla had been a lucky find. Most of two years since she had left the others had been spent living rough. What had she been able to achieve in that time? She'd managed to maim two mining camps with explosives that had been easily replaced within the month. She was limited by the fact she couldn't kill the human slaves that had done nothing wrong. "I said I would fight until my final breath and it looks like I have too. So," she took a step forward towards Jas'ak so that there was an inch between them. Giya was a bit less than a head shorter than Jas'ak but her head was held high, her shoulders back and she had a commanding presence._

_"_What have you found in there Jas'ak?_" came the voice of the Jaffa commander from outside._

_Jas'ak was silent and then, without moving his gaze from Giya he called out, "There is nothing. The woman was telling the truth."_

_Giya was confused and couldn't get her thoughts together._

_Jas'ak lent towards her and put his lips a fraction of an inch from her ear. "Stay hidden." He whispered._

_Giya stood dead still._

_"Do not allow yourself to be seen." he continued, "At dusk you will be able to make your way to the stargate. Wait there." And then he was gone. He'd made his way swiftly out of the house, onto the street._

\-----/

"I heard them leave. They took all the villages down to the southern fields while a few of them stayed behind to search the rest of the homes. I think they some how managed to track me to that world. It was one of Mordel's mining camps that I had hit about a week before. I thought I had made a clean escape…obviously not.

Teal'c had remained silent through out Giya's story. He had not asked her to tell it but she had felt compelled to and anyone could tell that there was a great weight on her shoulders. So he had let her talk. The whole time she had never focused her eyes on one point and her voice sounded like she was talking to herself.

"Did you meet him at the Stargate?" Teal'c asked.

Giya nodded. "I had watched him in the fields through the day and he seemed to be different to the rest of the Jaffa. He was…well…kind to the villagers. He would only ever tell them to work harder if they were truly slack. I even saw him let Cenla pass by with a half empty load. And not once did he strike or even speak harshly to any of them, which is more than I can say for the others.

"So I met him and we talked for a while. At first he was very reserved, suspicious but eventually he told me about why they had come. They had been told to track down a woman that seeked to weaken their faith in Mordel. Most of the Jaffa had associated this with a rumour, tales of a waif, a ghost that would come in the night to destroy. He had even been at the mining camp and right after the explosions had gone off and caught a glimpse of me.

"I do not think an older Jaffa could have spoken as he did. He had not lived in servitude long enough to have the fight drawn from him. He feared the ideas of rebellion that he had and I told him that he should always fight for his freedom. I told him what he had needed to hear for so many years: that he was not the only one that thought the goa'uld were _not_ gods.

"We met many times after that, in secret. A month later he left his home to join me in my fight." Giya seemed to come to her senses then. "I'm sorry. I must be keeping you from your rest." She stood up in a clear but polite indication that she wanted him to leave.

"Do not be sorry." Teal'c stood as well. "I will leave you in peace." As he reached the door he turned around to face her. "Please know that Jas'ak history is one that will be recovered and treasured by the Jaffa nation when it is whole again."

"Thankyou," Giya said softly, "Goodnight."

With a final nod Teal'c exited, closing the door behind him.

Without bothering to change out of her cloths, Giya half lay, half fell onto the bed. She lay on her side, pulled her legs tight against her chest and waited for the morning.

_NOTE: Review and suggestions pretty please._


End file.
